


Chrysalis

by motheatenscarf



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dark is not Evil, F/M, Friendship, Good Is Not Soft, Other, Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-05-30 16:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motheatenscarf/pseuds/motheatenscarf
Summary: Agent Theron Shan has cocooned himself in a net of mistrust, his caution advancing his goals in the SIS as efficiently as it suffocates the efforts of anyone trying to reach him. That safety is threatened, however, when his Jedi partner asks for his trust in an alliance forged between herself and a dangerous Sith to bring lasting change to the Empire. The stakes are just high enough for him to risk the venture, but will his caution let slip the truth that lies within his grasp, or is it all that stands between him and a final betrayal?





	1. Chapter 1

“If Lana vouches for you, I’ll let that be enough,” spat the Wrath. The Emperor’s most formidable assassin was soden with the stench of seaweed wafting off her dark armor while she circled him, black fur collar making her look comically like a drowned rat. The state of her might have fooled anyone into disregarding her reputation had it not been for the way she held her shoulders low, her gait silent and steady as she stalked. Then she added, as if in warning, “For now.”

Theron was, wisely, he believed, something of a miser when it came to holding his trust close to his vest.

There’d been no great betrayal that had bled him dry of confidence, no thieving hands he’d poured his faith into that absconded in the night. He had no single catalyzing event he could point to as just reason for declining every petition for trust that crossed his desk. He just knew better than to give more than he could ever afford to lose.

“Fair enough, Sith,” he said with a shrug that revealed nothing.

Offering the chance to pool resources with the Wrath and her advisor had been a pittance on his part. One he’d carefully tied a string to and stood ready to snatch back at the slightest provocation. 

The Jedi in the room standing a respectful distance from him gave a long suffering sigh and folded her water-ladden robe over her in her arms. “Please continue Miss Beniko,” she implored with all the patience she had left.

Aerasuni was quickly becoming one of the few people he wouldn’t refuse rationing out small allowances of confidence to now and then. Of course he’d never admit as much to her directly but that discretion probably did little to conceal his reluctant fondness of the Jedi from her own intuition. An empath of unmatched ease, she extended herself through the force to break through even the most hardened Sith’s mental defenses, reading emotions in a function as natural and automatic for her as breathing.

Whatever she felt from the two Sith in the room seemed to drain her of her usual serenity. Between his own reluctance, the maze that must have weaved through Beniko’s mind, and whatever nightmares skulked about in the Wrath’s hellscape of a brain, Aerasuni looked for all the galaxy like she wished Theron had left her at the bottom of the ocean.

Lana took the Jedi’s invitation as confirmation they could all play nicely and began explaining the arrangement she and Theron had come to in their charges’ absence. He’d been aware enough of his own limitations to see the benefit of their mutual cooperation when she’d offered it. There was enough on the line that he could justify the risky venture of accepting a Sith’s offer of aid. 

Besides, if he went looking for the Revanites on his own they might find him first and offer him as some sort of blood sacrifice to revive his ancestor, or worse, idolize him as the last in the line of Revan. 

He scoffed at the thought. The cultists would have probably wept to find out all three hundred years of legendary Jedi and all the power they wielded had only amounted to him.

The four of them spent nearly ten minutes laying out the ground rules for their strange new allegiance. Theron’s attention drifted between the three women, reminding himself to make eye contact from time to time to make a show of actively listening, halting with unease each time it fell upon the Wrath.

She spoke hardly a word, her ever vigilant scrutiny fixed entirely on him. Occasionally her eyes would dart briefly to either the other Sith or Jedi for appearance's sake, humming the odd disinterested noise of approval, but always she returned those sickly yellow eyes back to him. There was no particular malice to her gaze, more studious in their exam than any attempted show of intimidation. Somehow he felt that was worse. He could imagine the sting of invisible pins where she might have stuck him to a slab like a gizka on dissection day and watched him with that same cold fascination.

Why he held greater interest to the Emperor’s Wrath than the Hero of Tython who’d supposedly killed her namesake and master, Theron couldn’t begin to understand. 

It was almost a relief when, after they’d all dismissed one another on amiable enough terms and left contact information, the Wrath snapped from her stillness to snag the Jedi’s arm and roughly usher her aside. Beniko had already left the room, saying something about catching a ride with the wookie the Wrath had recruited but Theron caught the act out of the corner of his eye.

Burying how she’d rattled him, he spun fast on his heel and marched back into the tranquil office ready for war. Hand at his holster, poison darts primed and voice deep in his throat, he warned her.

“Something you wanna share with the class, Sith?”

Only when challenged did the Wrath’s features transform. 

Master Zho had explained to him once that the reason Sith eyes and sabers burned as they did was because of their poisoned connection to the force. The dark side brought nothing but pain and suffering to all it touched, he’d cautioned, and the Sith who drowned themselves in it were no exception. A kyber crystal bled when wounded just like the fat lip Zho was tending to after Theron had picked a fight with a local bully, the preface to this particular lecture. So too then, he reasoned, did a Sith’s eyes bleed with all the fear and all the hatred their wounded souls had drunk of in their search for power.

The feral look she bore in those bleeding, force burnt eyes pierced straight through him and stole from him all the oxygen and warmth in his chest. Darkness settled comfortably in their place, hard ice crystalizing in the void that remained. 

He held back the expanding chill that threatened to consume him by swallowing it hard as it reached his throat, holding his breath as he held her gaze firmly.

The fire in his eyes would never match Wrath’s but he poured every ounce of desperation he carried into them for her to contemplate. I’m not a Jedi, they warned. I don’t owe you a fair fight.

The Wrath blinked.

Something glinted across her eye, twisting the corners of her lips up and up, revealing a blaze of teeth. A palpable smugness oozed from them like venom.

Theron inhaled a quick, shaky breath, but stood unfaltering.

“Let’s not lose our tempers now, Agent Shan,” she mocked. “I’ll only steal your Jedi for a moment. I merely thought given our _allegiance_ there were a few things she ought to hear from me.”

Her emphasis on the word raised alarms in his skull.

Aerasuni answered for him by raising a halting palm. “It’s alright, Theron. Wait outside please.”

His head twitched in surprise like a nerf shaking off a fly. He opened his mouth to ask why she would bother to give the Sith the time of day, to make some clever quip back to the Wrath, to protest that there was no way in hell he would walk face first into that defenseless hallway where Beniko was probably waiting to ambush him once the Wrath isolated his Jedi. They all died on his tongue. 

The Jedi gave him a sullen look. “Theron?”

“Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, sure thing.”

His steps echoed in the renewed tranquility, the room silent enough for him to hear the Wrath’s amused comment. “Well, he’s certainly spirited.”

Stepping into the hall, he noticed that Lana had somehow vanished. Nothing but expansive white corridors stretched in either direction but there was no trace of the Sith who couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds ahead of him. Theron glanced left, right, left again, and frowned. 

He really hoped he was going to live long enough to regret working with two Sith this dedicated to spooking him.

He reached into his pocket for his datapad. Might as well keep himself distracted while he waited, he figured. The backlight hummed as he thumbed through the screen, deciding that if the Sith were already going to break the rules by calling for secret meetings with his Jedi then he might as well even the playing field. It took an eternity for his private connection to load the SIS databanks, his foot tapping all the while as the update he’d been putting off for over two weeks took its time installing. Finally, the search page loaded and he stared at it blankly.

Shit. What had the Wrath’s name been again? Something hideous that had stuck to the front of his teeth when he tried to repeat it. Escalator or Essentialism or something unfortunate like that. He hoped “Emperor’s Wrath” was enough to find the dossier quickly. Thankfully there were only two personnel files in the SIS’ records for “The Wrath, Emperor’s” and her ghastly face on one of the profiles was easily recognizable.

The blurry candid photo was taken from at least eighty meters back with a cheap camera with an even cheaper zoom feature but the details were all there in the pixels. Pale, sallow skin stretched over the Wrath’s razored cheeks long marred by deep canyons of scarring beneath heavy, sunken lids that had sat hollow save for two hate scorched eyes. She looked like a dessicated jack-o-lantern carved too late in season wearing a cheap gray wig.

Technically he didn’t have high enough clearance to get at the file since it was a loan from the Jedi Council’s library on persons of interest. It would take a fully fledged Jedi Master hovering over him and a permissive memo from the Director for him to even look at these files. He chortled in the empty hallway as he entered Aerasuni’s access code. Jedi never could be bothered to update their passwords.

He choked on the laugh when he saw the “Welcome Back” message and the note that it had been over two years since Master: Hannan, Aerasuni had visited that particular page. That stuck out to him like a sore thumb. The Jedi hadn’t mentioned at any point in their introductions that she was aware of the new Wrath’s identity.

A fluorescent bulb flickered dimly down the cold hall.

Why had she lied about that?

The image of a lightsaber burst loose from the darkest recesses of his imagination, hilt of shining silver stuck deep in his back with plasma blue as the skies over Alderaan emerging where his heart belonged, held in place and twisted further by crimson hands belonging to the fabled Hero he’d entrusted with both. He tried to shake it loose but the thought wrapped itself around his brain, settling neatly into every crevice and permeating every thought he pulled out to wedge it free.

No.

No, Aerasuni must have just forgotten, or played dumb to keep her cards concealed. The Wrath must have just held her back to gloat like Sith always did. They didn’t know each other and they definitely weren’t in there conspiring against him. Aerasuni wasn’t some secret Revanite waiting for the right moment to strike like Darok had been. She was loyal to the Republic, it didn’t matter that beneath the brown robe she donned every morning was skin the color of blood bred only in the Empire. 

He wouldn’t entertain his paranoia with discrimination. The Jedi hadearned her reputation. He’d trust that if nothing else and aim his suspicion where it belonged. 

Click.

He downloaded the profile onto his datapad. It would expire in twelve hours for security’s sake and it didn’t seem especially long so he set to reading right away. Sometimes he’d find himself stopping to re-read a sentence two or three times to fully absorb it amid the thoughts that rallied for his attention, the comfortably nesting image resurfacing each time he lost his focus.

Throwing himself into his reading, he didn’t notice the door hissing open behind him in time and was so surprised by a welcoming call of his name that he leapt, flinging his datapad into the air with an undignified shriek.

Aerasuni glided out with her hands folded neatly in front of her, the Sith sauntering alongside. He was helpless to say anything in his defense as two women, each a living weapon that held the other in check with their respective might, watched him with matched misgivings as he juggled the screen back and forth between his fumbling hands. 

One miss. Two, three. Shit. _Shit._ Smack! He slapped it between his palms mid-air like a caught fly and folded it neatly back into his pocket.

The silence that followed was heavier than the ocean he felt the sudden need to remind them both he’d rescued them from drowning beneath with his unmatched skills as a slicer and field agent. It was quiet enough to pick up on the faint smack of the Wrath’s mouth opening to say something cutting.

He didn’t let her have the chance, cutting her off first with a cracked, high pitched, “Hey.” His ears burned as he coughed, then repeated, much deeper this time, “Hey.”

The Sith pursed her lips and exhaled slowly through her nose, craning her neck to give the Jedi a put-upon glower. Aerasuni responded with a pleading look. The Wrath shook her head and brushed past him, rolling her eyes. Her only comment on the display was a quiet griping he couldn’t fully hear but sounded something like, “Cipher’s never going to agree to this.” 

Theron fought a shudder as he lost sight of her, acutely aware of his unguarded spine at her retreat. She made no noise as she left, not even an echo of footsteps or the squelching of water logged joints. He wondered if she’d left at all and wasn’t just continuing to stare at him from behind but he found solace in trusting the relaxed posture the Jedi adopted to mean the Wrath was indeed creeping away from them. She was as ghostly in her absence as she had been in her presence.

With the agents of the Empire gone, Theron was finally left with the Jedi he was only now beginning to tally just how much of his trust he’d loaned. A Jedi with a lightsaber bluer and more impassive than the eyes of the mother who’d wanted no part of him. A Jedi who could effortlessly cut through flesh and bone which guarded naked heart, blade or no.

Water droplets splashed off Aerasuni’s robe onto the pristine white tiles, occasionally reaching across the few feet between them and landing on his boots. He watched his feet, kicking them on the ground to shake the water off, saying nothing. 

Aerasuni opened and shut her mouth several times, eyes darting about with something he didn’t want to think of as guilt behind them, looking for the right words. A forced smile settled on her lips before offering, “Why don’t we go for a walk around the plaza?”

Theron worried at his lip, trying to pick off a flap of loose skin with his teeth. Not really, he wanted to say, but each excuse he tried to settle on was ushered away with a flash of blue.

“Sure,” was all he said.

The Jedi led the way, out the opposite hallway the Sith had skulked down and around a few corners before they emerged into the harsh sunlight of Manaan. 

Theron’s face collapsed in on itself squinting as he failed to adjust to the light, his eyes and lips sour black holes pulling every surrounding inch of skin into their event horizon. The Jedi beside him cupped a delicate hand over her brow like a salute to form a shaded visor.

The plaza was bustling, abuzz with hundreds of selkath and dozens of aliens all warbling in a cacophony of languages his translator struggled to keep up with. Market canopies of sun bleached red and yellow provided enough shade for him to relax his face a bit, nostrils opening for him to take in the fresh fruit and dust that permeated the air, the metallic tang of kolto sifting in on the ocean breeze and settling on his taste buds. 

The Jedi sighed, watching the sea lap against the low retaining wall with a wistful contentment to her. “It really is a lovely planet.”

“Yea,” said Theron, “it’s great.”

They strolled past the shops, stopping long enough at a few for the Jedi to pick up an array of trinkets she commented her friends might like. Theron bought nothing, keeping his eyes fixed to the saber at the Jedi’s hip as he watched her.

Aerasuni held a refined air about her not uncommon for a Jedi. Even as her hands rummaged for her credit chit through her sodden robes she moved like a painting. Her silver armor glittered even more than the sea in the light of the sun, perfect waves of wine colored hair splashing against her crimson neck in time with each graceful step she took. Despite the depth of feeling he knew her capable of there was serenity in everything she did, the tenets of peace first in all things so irrevocably part of her being. No one watched them, scarcely any seemed to even glance at them, but the crowds of people scurrying down the main street seemed to part as she strolled, unimpeded and calm.

It was Jedi like her that made Theron think it had really been for the best he’d turned out blind to the force. He never would have measured up against the Grandmaster’s favored disciple.

“I couldn’t help but notice you were looking her up on your datapad,” she said, breaking the uneasy silence between them as they left the grocer’s stall with the red and gold fruit she’d purchased in hand. “How far did you get in her dossier?”

Theron shoved his fists in his pockets, feeling suddenly abashed. “Not very,” he admitted. “Kept thinking about what you two might be talking about.”

He wanted to lie to her. She’d been acting suspiciously since she got back from that lab. His training told him to slip a datastick in her pocket and have it clone all the call logs and files on her ship while he played ignorant to any change in behavior. Maybe if he gave her the truth though she’d have some explanation for him. Any explanation, even a lie, would have to have been better than the images rattling around in his skull. 

Aerasuni’s head hung low. “I know what you must be feeling right now.”

Theron stopped dead in his tracks, eyes wide. 

Oh no. Of course she knew. She couldn’t not know. 

Jedi. Force sensitive. Empath. 

There was a sudden urge for him to slap himself stupid, or stupider at least. He’d grown too reliant on his implants to protect him from the conscious prodding of force users. Aerasuni might not be able to read the exact details of his thoughts but she was powerful enough to feel, intensely, every stray pang of hurt or doubt that happened upon him. The image that shrouded his mind crumpled into a ball of lead with the guilt that weighed on him and sank straight to his stomach. 

“It’s alright, Theron.” She stopped and turned to console him, heartbreaking sincerity in her understanding as she settled a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry for how this must look, especially with what you must be feeling after Darok.”

Theron felt something welling behind his eyes and flinched away from the touch. 

Friendship with Jedi had always been difficult for him. Not just because they reminded him of all the things he wasn’t and would never be but because of the benevolent, open tenderness that could come from the best of them. Which, he supposed, were really one in the same thing.

“Nah,” he reassured with a forced laugh, blinking away and shutting down whatever was beneath the surface as he shrugged free of the hand. “Not feeling anything.”

The Jedi frowned.

“Of course,” was her graceful response. She closed her hand into a loose fist and drew it back to her chest, resting it on her robes as she continued walking. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in before revealing, “The Wrath is my cousin.”

Theron blinked. 

He’d never asked about Aerasuni’s family before. Given that she was Sith-blooded but raised by the Jedi, he figured it was complicated and spared her the discomfort.

In his defense it wasn’t anything personal against her specifically. He tried not to ask about anyone’s family if he could help it. Questions of that nature were usually met with reciprocated interest and that was never a conversation he was prepared to have.

The Jedi had asked him exactly once about the Grandmaster when they first met. He’d barely choked his bile down long enough to confess that yes, he was her son, and no, he didn’t actually know her when you got down to it. He didn’t need to tell her why. She knew as well as any, no matter what the birth certificates said, Jedi didn’t have families.

The apology she’d offered afterword for her thoughtlessness only made his bitterness sting all the worse. It was one thing to feel jealous of the young Jedi who’d been taken under the wing of the mother who’d flown the coop on him, it was another for her to be kind about it. She was insufferably likable.

Whatever that family tree looked like, either Aerasuni or the Wrath had clearly fallen very, very far from it. Theron somehow suspected that despite the red skin, it was his Jedi who grew to be the odd Sith out.

“Helluva family,” murmured Theron. 

Aerasuni laughed. “You’re telling me.”

“Look,” he exhaled, unsure of how to ask delicately. “I know families can be… complicated.”

Aerasuni saved him from himself, taking pity and inferring the rest of his question. Her empathy wasn’t all bad, sometimes.

“I don’t actually remember her from before,” she explained, fingers fidgeting to peel the skin off the fruit she’d bought. “Or any of the rest of the family, for that matter. I was only eight or nine when the Jedi had to wipe my memories to break me free from some sort of trance. I only found Tallia again by accident looking for the Emperor two years ago.”

There was no pain in her voice as she spoke. She didn’t recite it like a lived memory. It was more like she was telling him the plot to a vid she’d watched from another room six months prior. Most Jedi, or those raised to be Jedi, when speaking of their families were either so tightly wound and guarded they looked ready to pop or would let slip the faintest lapse in their composure as a mournful ache swept over them.

The only emotion that crossed this Jedi’s face was frustration at her nails’ inability to break through the peel. She huffed in defeat and brought it to her grinding teeth.

Theron took out a small pocket knife and held his hand out for the fruit before she could rip into it. Aerasuni handed it over with steady dignity.

“So you don’t really know her, then,” he inferred, hands growing sticky from bleeding juice as he cut into it.

“Not as well as I’d like.” Aerasuni frowned, but continued. “It was… tense, at first, but we talked things over. Getting to hear about my family was nice, even if I couldn’t really follow most of it.”

“I’ll bet,” he scoffed, unfurling the long peel in a single curve. Most family trees he’d seen come out of the Empire looked like a table of elements in their complicated intricacy designed only to brag about how much purer their blood was than their rivals’. 

Whatever Aerasuni’s head had been filled with before being spirited out of the Empire, he doubted it had been worth keeping anyway.

He handed the barely ripe green core of the fruit back to her. The Jedi thanked him and split it in half, a small burst of sweet smelling citric acid spritzing into the air. She took one half for herself and placed the other immediately back into his still outstretched palm. He curled his fingers around it with a nod, allowing her to continue.

“Anyway,” she said through a juicy bite, pausing a moment to chew. “She surprised me. So we developed a kind of trade after that. It’s helped us keep in touch.” Her voice was muffled by the hand she brought to cover her mouth to keep from food spilling out as she spoke.

It was the most casual confession of treason Theron had ever heard. “What kind of trade?”

“Nothing bad.” She shook her head and swallowed a bite.

The furrow in his brow was his only answer.

“I never did anything that would hurt the Republic,” she assured with emphatic hands. “And considering what the Empire would do to her if what _she_ did ever came to light, it was more than a fair trade, trust me.”

He wanted to. “So, just catching up then?”

Aerasuni gave a thoughtful hum. “Sort of. Our arrangement required we build a sort of… neutral arbiter network. I told her in the lab I wanted to bring you in. She wanted to know more about you, but I think I convinced her. She’ll back me up if you’re interested.”

Theron wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or concerned that she’d put his name forward as a potential co-conspirator in this distressingly vague arrangement of neutral organizations.

He pinched his brow, rubbing in tight circles to dull the ache he felt growing as the chiming of bells and shouts from merchants trying to put the most flare into selling their goods suddenly began to bother him. “Aerasuni...”

“I know,” the Jedi sighed. “I probably wouldn’t have liked hearing about your deal with Lana if I couldn’t feel your sincerity. I probably wouldn’t trust me either if I were in your shoes. ”

His stomach churned and quivered with guilt. “It’s not you, it’s just.” He took in a breath to steady his nerves as he dragged his hand down his fast to worry at his scruff. “It’s hard, you know?”

Aerasuni gave a sad, understanding nod. “I do. I’m used to it, really.”

Theron’s face sank. That hadn’t been what he’d meant. 

He wanted to correct the assumption but the lump in his throat choked the words back. He looked away, unable to bear that boundless compassion and patience in her eyes as she watched him struggle.

That was when he noticed the people in the market.

The crowd that was parting around them were deliberately avoiding looking at her. Sometimes a person would turn, see them, gasp wide eyed and fearful, and immediately one-eighty back to whatever they’d been doing before. Merchants would watch them with knitted brows until Theron caught them staring, then look away as nonchalantly as possible at some invisible fascination in the sky.

The universe didn’t bend itself to the serenity of her presence. People didn’t part in awe or avert their unworthy gaze from her. No one saw the best of the Jedi, savior of the Order and hero of the Republic. All they saw was a Sith. And all they did for it was pray that Sith wouldn’t notice them in turn.

“I’m sorry,” he said weakly.

“I trust you, Theron,” she replied, shaming him. “Just like I trust her, just as I trust the people I’m offering you to join. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

She didn’t ask explicitly but the underlying question was there- _Do you trust me?_

He should, he knew. He trusted her loyalty enough to use that red skin as a tactical advantage in sending her disguised in black robes to that first wave on Korriban. He trusted her enough to return to Tython and save the mother he wasn’t ready to lose yet. He trusted her enough to confide in her when he uncovered the depth of Darok’s treachery. Her blood held the same conviction and kinship then as it did now. The only difference was now he knew.

And he only knew because she’d trusted him with the truth, no matter how it looked.

Had her tranquility, he wondered, been born of turning inward in finding no one brave enough to disturb her loneliness? Not the Order, not her cousin Wrath, not the people she fought for who shunned her, nor the people she belonged to but defended the galaxy from. Perpetually in between. A neutral arbiter, like the people she’d asked him to join.

His face softened. She wasn’t asking if he trusted her at all. She was pleading, in that somber way of hers, for him to please. _Please._ Let her in.

Well... he’d already been willing to face down the Wrath once for her.

Theron sighed and poured whatever was left of his waning faith into her hands.

“What would I have to do?”

Aerasuni’s features brightened just a little. “You’ll do it, then?”

“I’ll need to know more before I commit,” he stressed without sounding like he really meant it.

The Jedi bit back a cherubic smile and gave a resolute nod, a small skip apparent in her step now. “Of course. I can’t tell you everything yet until they give you the okay, unfortunately, but they definitely will and then I promise, all the files and anything you want to know are yours.”

She trailed off into actual rambling trying to sell him on this neutral arrangement in the vaguest terms possible, small emerald flecks of her treat spitting out in her excited haste. 

Theron listened, not as intently as he probably should have, studying instead his half of the strange fruit she’d given him. He deliberately ignored the way his stomach still turned itself into knots trying to dislodge that sinking weight and dug his teeth deep into the gift. The juice burned at the lip he hadn’t noticed he’d chewed raw in his worrying, a sweet sting that he clenched his jaw to bear, knowing it would cleanse the open wound if he could just endure.

It was warm from sitting in the open air of the market all day and it hurt his gums if he chewed too long. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d have sprung for himself, certainly, but he found it pleasantly refreshing in its novelty. 

He nodded along to what the Jedi was saying, agreeing to meet her on Nar Shaddaa within the week for his induction, making a mental note to keep his office stocked with fresh fruit for the foreseeable future. He could spare that much effort for a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who helped boost my confidence enough to post this, including especially my brother who proofread the worst of my typos and depizan on tumblr for helping me make sense of Ao3s formatting.  
> For those interested, this should update every Tuesday for the next month or so as I'm only currently planning on 5, possibly 6 chapters at the outside, of comparable length.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My brevity is not what I'll be known for.

Theron was twelve before he’d ever needed to set foot in a proper academy or taken an economics class. 

Coming from an ascetic lifestyle where he’d lived with a mad hermit in a hand-built hut on a backwater rock that still relied on the barter system, he had understandable difficulty adapting. Initially, he made the mistake of seeking his classmates’ help in making sense of the avalanche of new information being hurled at him. When he asked his roommate if a “trust-fund” referred to trust and good-faith being used in place of actual hard-currency, the affluent boy howled with laughter, called him stupid, and threw a dirty sock at him.

He relied solely on his own counsel from that point on after he finished washing his face. With careful study his academic performance turned around so quickly and so well that he eventually crunched the numbers and calculated that he could afford to completely bomb his econ final and still pass by the skin of his teeth. He wound up tying for the worst grade on said test but was, unlike _someone_ he’d caught cheating off his midterm six weeks prior, still able to graduate with his class despite being so helplessly “stupid.” 

The experience hadn’t taught so much as cemented two cornerstones of his philosophy; one, that he couldn’t blindly rely on others, and two, that being underestimated was a huge advantage. It had also thirdly confirmed that he was capable of being far more petty than was probably acceptable of a Jedi, but he wasn’t a Jedi, and that wasn’t so much a philosophy as it was something he refused to work on.

Aerasuni had convinced him to join a neutral organization created between herself, her cousin Wrath, and an unknown series of third “arbiters” he was scheduled to meet with that evening. With treason on the line and conspiracy in the air through the looming threat of the Revanites, it was a much bigger favor to ask of his trust funds than being allowed to peer over his shoulder when the teacher wasn’t looking. The Jedi had asked for his trust and he’d given it, but he wasn’t yet prepared to completely abandon his hard won lessons for her allies.

He stared at his holocom, thumb hovering over the dial with only the faintest twitch to hint at his apprehension.

“Plan C, then,” he sighed and dialed out again.

He sat in the one quiet spot on the Nar Shaddaa Promenade where Aerasuni was scheduled to meet him with her colleagues in roughly forty minutes. Ten minutes had already passed since he’d arrived, ordered, and sat down with his caf to start calling. Teff’ith hadn’t picked up any of the sixteen times he’d called and had yet to respond to the four different messages he’d sent telling her to call him back. There was only one other person he knew on Nar Shaddaa who might help him.

The man on the other end of his comm picked up after the third alert and the image of a well cut figure splayed out across a bar stool popped into the display ring.

“‘Yello?” drawled the lounging man-shaped heap, comm in one hand and drink in another. The faint thumping of a bass in the background could be heard carrying into the audio as he spoke.

“Well, look who it is,” Theron greeted, hoping his cheer didn’t sound too forced. “How are you, Jonas?”

There were few people who were as good at their job while having as little passion for their work as Agent Jonas Balkar. Even if the Director ever did extract him for his lousy work ethic, it was doubtful he’d find anyone to replace him who could get as much with a lazy smile and a friendly ear as Jonas could when halfway applying himself. 

“Theron Shan!” The other spy brightened upon recognizing him. “Well, I’ll be damned. Look at that crystal clear image. And no time lag to boot. Finally decided to show up in my neck of the woods for drinks, did you?”

The only problem was Jonas rarely applied himself to anything that wasn’t trying to drag Theron kicking and screaming out of his own head.

His smile began to slip into a grimace. “Sorry, can’t make it. Busy, you know?”

It wasn’t so much that Theron didn’t respect Jonas as a colleague, or even dislike him on any personal level. He just didn’t like playing the sidekick in his own life on his rare evening out.

Jonas gave an amused sigh. “Always working. Oh, nice job with the Academy by the way, heard that was all you. I’ll bet that stunt with your ‘pure’ friend stung when they figured it out.” He wheezed out a distracted snicker as he took another sip through his winding straw. “If they even figured it out. Oh, please tell me they never figured it out.”

Theron squinted at the small holographic image of the spy, drawing the comm closer to look for the tell-tale unfocused gaze or any kind of wobbling off his seat. Jonas wasn’t quite slurring but he was decidedly more… rambly, than usual. “Are you drunk already?”

“No!” Jonas scoffed between the last slurps of his drink. “Tipsy maybe. Bubbly, more like. Look, I’m just fun enough to make you sound interesting. I’m perfect wingman drunk.”

“It’s not even six o’clock yet, how are you this drunk already?” Theron knew for a fact Jonas didn’t even roll out of bed until three most days and didn’t get to work until happy hour started when people were at their chattiest. He wouldn’t have cared how Jonas did his work normally, but he needed the man to be clear-headed for this.

Jonas shrugged unapologetically. “Not my fault. Sat down and next thing I knew, bartender handed me this fizzy thing courtesy of a very handsome nautolan. You get over here and buy the next round, I’ll even save him for you.”

Theron fought the urge to slam his head into the table. There was a part of him, a very small, very tired part of him, which envied Jonas’ ability to let loose and maintain a healthy social and personal life. That part was drowned out by the rest of him which really, really wished it had been Teff’ith who’d answered his call.

“Jonas, please, I’m trying to call for your help!”

The other spy actually straightened up a bit at that, as if it might will him back to sobriety. “What kind of help?”

He couldn’t give him the whole truth. He’d been planning to just ask this as a favor, no questions asked, something they could chalk up to discussing when the great and unknowable “someday” where they’d discuss all their work secrets happened upon them but a thought dawned on him. Jonas was probably just drunk enough to buy it too.

“I need you to help me with… a date thing. Because I, uh… have a date. With someone.”

“What!” Jonas shouted loud enough for Theron to wince and shot up out of his slouch, leaning into the comm. “Hot damn, really? Who is it, is it anybody I know? Oh! Is it that Jedi you’ve been working with?”

Theron nearly balked at the notion of “dating” Aerasuni, pretty and endearing though she was. He’d long known better than to ever, in any capacity, think of any Jedi in any kind of romantic sense. Nothing against them personally, of course, and he knew plenty of them broke the code to pursue relationships with or without Council approval, Aerasuni included if he was right about that huge red asshole she hung around with. That was sort of the point, really. The last thing the galaxy needed was another generation of accidental baby-Shan cast-offs. 

“Nope,” he managed to say calmly. “Not a Jedi. It’s… Uh…” Name. Need a name. Think of _any_ description or clarification. Some gender or a species at least. “... I will tell you later.” 

Was it more pathetic to lie about having a date or to not actually know enough people to make it a convincing lie? Fuck. Maybe he should have let Jonas set him up after all.

“Oh, right,” Jonas chewed thoughtfully on the end of his straw. “Probably not a Jedi, they’re weird about that. So, whaddya need? Advice? Your date have a cute friend? Need me to patch into your comms and feed you a few lines? Heard one yesterday that was really good. How’d it go again? Something about an interior designer...”

On second thought, trusting Jonas’ judgement in that department probably wasn’t the best idea. “No, nothing like that. Listen, I just need you to pick something up for me. It’s kinda gross, but-”

“Oh?” Jonas sat more alert than he had the entire conversation, his voice rising with piqued interest.

“Yeah. Come to the Chiss place on the Promenade,the little cafe with the blue awnings, there’s a waste-bin out front I’ve hidden-”

He deflated back into his slouch. “Oh…” 

Theron glared, but continued, slightly more tense. “There’s a transmission receiver in a cup at the bottom of the spill liner. Wait two hours and then- hey!” He snapped his fingers, drawing the other spy’s head back toward him from whatever distraction had just walked past. 

“What!”

“Pay attention! In two hours, set an alert, come and look for that receiver. If you don’t see me here and I haven’t called you by then, I need you to follow that signal and come get me.”

Jonas stared at him in what he could only assume was confusion.

“Can you do that?” Theron was almost shouting with how carefully he enunciated each word.

“See,” sighed Jonas, “this kinda thing? This is why you never get second dates.”

Theron grit his teeth. “Jonas!” 

His determination might have been impressive if it weren’t so infuriating.

“Relax, would you? I’m a professional. Try to remember to have fun on your date, you paranoid freak.”

Well that was uncalled for. “It’s Nar Shaddaa, alright? You can’t be too careful.”

Jonas agreed with a lazy chuff that held years’ worth of frustration behind it. “You’re telling me.”

“Okay, well… thank you. I’ll call you later, hopefully.”

“I’ll keep my comm near.” He raised his empty glass in farwell, bendy straw sloshing around in the melting ice.

Theron hung up before he could embarrass himself further.

Letting his ‘On-The-Holo’ mask fall he dropped his face into his hands to rest there for a time. Maybe he should try calling Teff’ith just once more. Being called stupid every other sentence and cussed out for bothering her would be worth it if it meant having reliable backup in case things went south with the Wrath or her arbiters. Of course, he could also just leave. It wasn’t technically too late to get up and bail on the entire meeting.

Except that his conscience and his survival instincts were apparently on different frequencies. The way the Jedi had confided her trust in him so sincerely echoed through his skull each time the urge to run crossed his mind. There was just enough trace of a small boy who hadn’t yet learned to be guarded or petty rattling around behind his ribs though that he knew exactly what the Jedi would go through if he ran out on her now.

He unburied his face and downed the last gulp of his caf, slipping the receiver he’d hidden up his sleeve into the emptied cup. Then he walked to the bin, lifted the spill bag, and dropped the cup to the bottom. The Jedi might complain if she knew, but she’d sense no betraying reservation from him. He was committed.

He returned to his seat and waited, arms folded, leg bouncing. Aerasuni arrived ten minutes later, trotting up with her composure lapsing just enough for him to see the subtle signs of absolute panic racing through her. 

“Hi,” she greeted on an exhale to hide how out of breath she was. “You’re here. Good.”

“Yeah...” Theron glanced to the side, shifting his attention to double-check the internal clock in his implants. “You’re… early.”

“I am,” she nodded, and motioned hurriedly for him to follow her. “Let’s go.”

Theron rose, eyeing her cautiously. “Go?” That hadn’t been the plan.

Her head bobbed in a rushed nod, sliding over to help him up out of the seat faster. “Yes, go, we have to go. Quickly, cab’s waiting.” 

He’d known well enough to plan for this possibility but everything in his training told him not to follow a contact to a secondary location. 

The Jedi gave him a friendly nudge, repeating herself. “Come on, let’s go, go, go.”

Fuck it, he figured. “Alright.”

* * *

Aerasuni’s guiding prod turned into a demanding vise as she dragged him down the main thoroughfare of the Promenade. He stumbled and skipped every odd step, helplessly trying to keep up. The Jedi wasn’t running, technically, too polite by far to completely disobey the signs forbidding as much, but neither was she polite enough to bother offering more than a dutiful pardon-me or sorry-so-sorry for every bowled over tourist who failed to heed the tall red freighter shoving inexorably past them.

They finally reached the traffic light where speeders circled and circled in search of treasure rarer than platinum in Promenade Direct Parking, and Theron’s heart leapt to his throat when she looked for a moment ready to draw her lightsaber and directly challenge the drivers to try and stop her. Seemingly thinking better of it after a moment’s consideration though, she stopped with a huff just before tipping over the curb. Theron took advantage of the break to wrench free of her grip and worry at his aching shoulder where she’d nearly ripped his arm off in her mad dash.

“Where,” he began, his mind finally catching up with the rest of him, “exactly are we going?”

“The Rising Star,” she answered, thumb repeatedly jabbing the crossing button as if one or both of them would expire if her hand fell from it for even an instant. “That’s our headquarters.”

Theron gave an approving nod while readjusting his jacket.

He’d been to the Rising Star exactly once when it first opened, after his first and only mission with Jonas. From what he could remember it was one of the classier resorts on Nar Shaddaa, probably owing to the fact that it was one of the few not owned by the Cartel. That evening had been somewhat fuzzy in his memory from the moment Jonas had ordered him something called a “Gamorrean Curbstomp” but he did recall the distinct lack of any gaudy golden statues or naked neon twi’leks beckoning in customers.

They waited at the light for all of eleven seconds before the Jedi declared, “Oh, this is just ridiculous,” and thrust her hand forward into the crosswalk.

Theron winced and averted his eyes from the scene as several speeders came to a jarring halt beneath the traffic lights that permitted their passage, seemingly hitting an invisible wall as their thrusters kept pushing out full speed but went nowhere. Aerasuni’s eye twitched with concentration as she hopped into the crosswalk, ignoring the blaring of horns and unique alien curses directed at her.

Theron trudged after her, his ears popping as he passed into the force she held in place. He briefly wondered if he should call the Grandmaster with a proposition to add a sixth line to the official Jedi code about there not being any meddling with the laws of traffic, only grudging patience.

“I’m sorry for the rush,” Aerasuni offered, shouting to be heard over the pileup of angry drivers, some of whom were attempting to test vertically how high the barrier reached. “But the window to sneak you in is very small.”

A gran driving a stark white, brand new speeder stood in his seat and leaned out over the windshield to throw his drink at them, failing to grasp the concept until the cup bounced off the invisible wall. Shock and sticky blue iced drink washed over him in the splashback, still slow in processing what exactly was happening as Aerasuni was already across the street when he began screaming something particularly misogynistic at her complete with a rude, suggestive gesture. She continued her march with dignity and ignored him but Theron twisted at the waist to lift both hands and mime the gesture back at him, arms shaking for emphasis.

He waited until they reached the other side safely and for the Jedi to relax her posture, the wall presumably falling as two speeders nearly crashed into each other, before asking the obvious question on his mind. “Why are we sneaking in at all? What happened?”

“We’re sneaking because he said no,” she answered, unhelpfully, darting toward the nearby cab haphazardly blocking in not one, not two, but three separate speeders in actual parking spaces. A spindly looking rodian wearing some kind of uniform was tisking at it disapprovingly as she entered something into her datapad. 

Aerasuni shooed him over to the passenger side while she approached the rodian who asked, “Is this your vehicle, ma’am?” 

The Jedi waved her hand in response. “No, it isn’t. There’s no cab here.”

The officer’s hands fell to her side as she glanced around thoughtfully, dropping her datapad to bring a hand to scratch absently at her twitching antenna. “I could have sworn…”

Aerasuni shrugged and hopped into the front seat, offering only a reassuring, “It happens to the best of us,” before starting the speeder.

Theron hadn’t even buckled before the Jedi gripped the steering controls tightly and began their ascent. He startled and grabbed the door to keep from falling out, glancing out over the side to see the rodian who stood there scratching her head, blind to the pileup of speeders still trying to right themselves as the crosswalk began to fill with a small crowd of bedraggled looking pedestrians stumbling out of the plaza.

He buckled his seatbelt and turned the dial which unfurled the retractable roof, just for the added protection in case she got pushy with the other drivers at the casino. “If this is your idea of sneaking so far, am I gonna have to worry about getting shot by security?”

“They’re not going to shoot you,” she grumbled, activating the autopilot to return them to their destination. “We’ve still probably got fifteen, twenty minutes before he notices I looped the cameras.” She glanced at the clock on the dashboard with a frown. “Well, maybe ten.”

Theron nodded and opened the passenger’s compartment, retrieving the standard medpack there and shoving it into his jacket for the inevitabile. “Right. So who’s ‘he’ and why is he gonna shoot me?’”

Aerasuni sighed and began to shrug out of her long brown cloak, taking advantage of the wiggle room while she could before the roof boxed her in. “The man who runs our operations has veto on all recruits. He has some grudge against the SIS.”

There were lots of people he could think of that might have a grudge against anyone in the SIS but only a small fraction of them would have the skills needed to operate as secretive a group as hers. “Ex-Intelligence?”

“Yep,” the Jedi strained, lifting herself by her core to free the back of the robe tucked beneath her seat. “Don’t worry, though, he’s not loyal anymore. He hates Imperials. And the Sith. And Jedi, and Mandalorians, and hutts, and everyone else in the galaxy but oh, he’ll let them in, no problem!” She sat back down with a huff and deposited the robe into his lap. “Put that on.”

Theron raised a cautious brow but knew better than to argue. “Might be more convincing if I got a prop. Maybe a lightsaber?”

He earned a half-hearted eyeroll and grin for the effort. “Just put the hood up and walk like a Jedi; quickly, but purposefully.

“Oh,” he guffawed, “is that how we’re describing what happened back there?”

Aerasuni made a show of straightening out the white sleeves of her undercoat, refusing to comment as the roof shut and the speeder reached its designated altitude, racing off for the casino. “I am sorry for how... hectic this all is. I was planning to give you a full tour of the facilities and answer all your questions after we wrapped up the meeting at the cafe. If you even still wanted to join, of course, but…”

Theron unfolded the robe in his lap, searching for the sleeves. “That version sounds nice. Getting a caf, maybe some cake, walking without almost getting run over and actually getting some answers...”

The Jedi grumbled a weary groan but didn’t argue. “It’s all for their safety, I’m sorry. My cousin’s risking a lot with this operation. Do you know what they do to traitors in the Empire?”

He did. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even the Emperor’s topmost assassin. Given how broad a definition the rigid Imperial code held for treachery, though, that still gave him little hint as to what, exactly, these people did. He gave a shrug as he pulled on his sleeves. “Well, I guess it depends on the crime.”

She chewed on her lip thoughtfully, her head bouncing side to side with a drawn out groan as she weighed her options. “Alright," she decided, confessing, "they’re trying to reform the Empire in secret. They call themselves The Broken Chain.”

Neither the name nor the secrecy inspired confidence in him as he paused. “...Aerasuni, is this a cult?”

That finally earned him an offended glare. “It is not a cult.”

“Are you _sure,_ though?”

“It’s not a cult!”

“Alright,” he yielded testily, rolling his arms overhead and leaning forward to drape the coat behind him. “Not a cult.” He shimmied into the robe as the Casino became visible in the distance. “What is it you do in this Not-Cult then?”

The Jedi brought her visor down and opened the mirror to fix her tousled hair, carefully untangling the curls as she spoke. “Not much, personally. They mostly operate in Imperial space. I used to get the acolytes they didn’t seed into the power structure safely to the Jedi but they have a privateer for that now. He’s the one who owns the casino.”

Theron didn’t comment how easily those people could have been seeding the Jedi Order with Sith loyalists through those efforts. 

“I still do most of the recruiting at least,” she continued. “You’ll only be my second addition into the inner circle.” 

The way she’d said that filled him with a distinct pride that he didn’t know what to do with. “Look,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “As great as it would be to see the Empire get its act together, I’ve kinda got my hands full just trying to keep the Republic from falling apart.”

“Theron…” Her hands halted in their work, grave frankess hardening behind the eyes in her reflection. “I think we both know it doesn’t matter how many Emperors anyone kills. The Republic will never be safe until the rest of the Sith become open to negotiating real, lasting peace.”

It was a bitter truth, he conceded. At their best, everything the SIS and the Jedi and the military and the Senate did was damage control. At their worst… well.

“I’m not sure everyone in the Republic wants peace,” he muttered, looking out the window to watch the projected lights dance just outside the resort as they approached.

Streams of silver illuminated its distinctive silhouette, its towering pillars reminding him of the giant ice formations on Ilum. The base of the building was more traditional, bulbous floating discs that held the entire structure aloft, bobbing gently against the air currents. If he craned his head to the side, it looked to him far more like a falling star than a rising one.

“I’m aware,” said the Jedi. She snapped her visor shut, reaching across the windshield to swipe away the usual advertisements that played when the cab began to slow for landing. “That’s why they need good people like you. And it’s not like you’d get nothing out of it, I’m certain they can help you track down the Revanites.”

That pulled Theron out of his melancholy. “How?”

Aerasuni moved her hand to the door in anticipation of the second the speeder stalled. “Our ops coordinator sort of specializes in conspiracies. And Tallia used to be a Revanite before founding the Broken Chain, she might be able to tell you something useful.”

The cab automatically shut itself off as it parked and the Jedi was already out the door before he could ask her which one Tallia was again. He sat there for a moment, racking his brain, fingers tapping on the door, trying to remember before Aerasuni shuffled around the back to open his door and guide him out.

He ran a hand over his pant leg beneath the robe slyly as he stood, unfastening the holster, just in case. If there was a Revanite in that building somewhere, there was no guarantee she might not still be loyal to them.

“Remember,” the Jedi began, adjusting his collar and tugging the robe so it covered his bright red, very non-standard Order issued jacket. “Quick, but purposeful. Follow closely and don’t make eye contact with anyone until it’s time to make our case to the Cipher.”

“Right,” he nodded. 

“Right.” She took in a slow, steady breath, then turned to lead him through the casino. 

* * *

The main gambler’s hall of the resort was an open, partially outdoor loft full to the brim with slots, roulette tables, and the odd sabaac game gathering for variety’s sake. Playing the role of the humble Jedi, Theron kept his head low to avert his eyes, as instructed. Beneath the hood that hung low over his brow, he could only see his feet, the real Jedi’s, and the plush, dark carpeting lit up with dancing colors from the array of slot machines luring in gamblers with cheerful promises of riches to be won. He nearly tripped several times, too busy trying to decide on the exact purpose he was supposed to be walking with to pay much attention to where, exactly, he was walking.

They ascended the curved staircase out the lobby, up though the overlook and into the building proper from there. So far they went ignored by all save for a pair of greeters who nodded a respectful, “Master Jedi,” at them in passing. Theron heard the gatherings of rapturous laughter and rushing liquid that must have been the bar, then further in blinked away the scratching pain brought on by a plume of heavy smoke that must have been where the high-rollers cavorted in their lounge. Onward they weaved through ducking servers with drink trays in hand past the sweet hickory filling the air just outside the barbecue buffet which his stomach growled at appreciatively before the Jedi stopped.

Theron nearly stumbled into her again, lifting his head to see a gargantuan twi’lek, seven feet tall and easily just as wide, bulging in every direction with ill-defined muscle blocking the door behind him.

“I.D., please,” he asked with a voice so deep Theron felt it rumbling in the floor.

Aerasuni reached into her collar and pulled a plasticard badge out for him to inspect, letting it fall against her chest after he gave an approving nod. He stepped aside and let drop the security grid for the Jedi to pass but lifted a meaty palm to impede Theron as he followed. 

“I.D., please.”

“Uhh… It’s just.. um,” Theron stammered, probing the pockets of the robe he’d been given. Lint, lint, toothpick. _Gross_. Ooh, candy! No, wait... just a mint. 

Nothing remotely resembling a pass. Shit.

Theron shot a pleading look at the Jedi for instruction or aid.

“Tuvo,” she called gently, getting the mountain of a man to turn and face her. With his full attention she waved her hand past his eyes. “This is Jaesa. You know Jaesa.”

Theron dropped his gaze back to the floor as the twi’lek turned round to inspect him. “Oh,” he decided, hazy and distant. “Did you forget your pass, Miss Willsaam?”

The twi’lek hunched down to look in his eye, Theron ducking and weaving to avoid direct eye contact, certain that would break the Jedi's spell. “Uh… yup. Yup, yup yup, dropped it by the slots. So clumsy.”

“You sound… different...”

Theron grimaced and mouthed, “Help,” to his friend.

“Oh, Tuvo,” she called again sweetly and waved. “Wasn’t it your lunch break?”

“Huh…” The twi’lek sniffed the air, contemplating the scents of the buffet wafting past his post which must have tempted him for the entirety of his every shift. “Yeah, it is,” he agreed, and lumbered off.

Theron watched him for a moment, a crease forming along his brow as he decided, “You are scary good at that.”

“Have to be,” she confessed with a dissatisfied pout, but pressed on.

Plush, high-end rugs gave way to thin, barely stitched together carpeting gave way to solid permacrete as they wound through the staff only section. Aerasuni’s pace was now almost as quick as it had been in her race through the Promenade, Theron noting that nearly eight minutes had passed since they’d entered the cab. Finally, the Jedi paused before another door, this time accompanied by the beeping and whirling of an electronic keypad being activated. 

“Watch your step,” she told him, barely above a whisper. Theron crossed the threshold into a stairwell and blanched at how muggy and stuffy the air suddenly was. In his disgust he made the mistake of looking over the safety railing, counting at least a dozen flights of stairs before his vertigo made him lose track.

He clenched his eyes shut, gripping hand over hand onto the railing to guide him down the steps to catch up with the Jedi who’d already descended the first flight. “How far are we-” 

Aerasuni Jedi shushed him, far louder than his actual question had been, and stopped to point up to a security cam on the wall. A single red recording eye blinked innocently at them. She waved to get his attention back and mouthed something that could have said either, “I didn’t loop audio,” or “I sat a poo patio,” but the first one seemed more likely.

He popped the mint into his mouth and followed, disappointed at how little it did to cleanse the rancid taste.

Down, down, down they crept into the bowels of the building, the air only getting muggier the further they descended, passing several caution signs warning about the machinery that operated beyond the doors at each floor. After roughly ten flights of stairs the Jedi halted before a door with another lock. She leaned over the railing, looked back up and began counting, then recounting each floor before she decided this must have been it and inserted her keycard.

Theron, now barely able to breathe with how hot it was and how heavy the robe around his shoulders felt, was getting ready to tell Aerasuni that no group could have possibly been worth all this effort when the lights shut off.

“Crap,” said the Jedi. “Well, he figured it out.”

She finished entering the passcode, muscle memory presumably enough to enter it correctly as Theron heard a familiar rush followed by the Jedi’s footsteps, uneven in their blind trepidation. 

Deciding his disguise wouldn’t matter if no one could see it anyway, Theron pulled his hood down and shrugged off the now sweat stained robe onto the floor. Aerasuni probably wouldn’t want it back as it were and no way was he lugging it around to trip over in this darkness.

He stretched out his hands, groping the air in front of him as he walked in hopes of finding something to guide him. “You know,” he sighed, his hand brushing against a knob beyond the doorway. “We could have done this over a nice refreshing caf and a Csilian ice cake.”

He heard Aerasuni fumble with something for a moment before being answered by the familiar hum of a lightsaber and a soft cyan light illuminating the room within a few feet of him. The light it provided was enough for him to realize the knob he’d grabbed had not, in fact, been a knob at all.

He hiccuped a strangled gasp in his throat, darting back, releasing the nozzle of a rifle stuck to the arm of an inactive battle droid in standby mode, barely catching himself from tripping over his own legs. From the limited scope provided by the Jedi’s lightsaber, he looked around the room and counted six more identical droids. With no sign of a wall, and the echo of his gasp still reverberating, he knew only that the room was very large and very empty save for the unknown number of droids contained within.

Theron opened his mouth to suggest a retreat back into the stairwell to strategize when the droid near him began to stir.

Amidst the cacophony of heavy mechanical joints awakening, the dim orange glow of battery powered eyes lighting up two, ten, thirty feet all around them, Aerasuni grabbed her lightsaber in one hand, Theron by her other, and _ran_. 

* * *

There was no need for the polite civility of apologies when shoving past droids with blasters the length of Theron’s entire body, nor the social faux pas associated with Jedi using their abilities for convenience’s sake. Aerasuni pushed a wave of force in front of her, sending the droids flying back beyond the burning light of her blade, the metallic crashing and ripping and faint sparks that flew the only indication they hadn’t simply vanished into the void.

She made her way toward something unknown, guided only by her memory in the darkness. A memory which Theron surmised to be faulty at best as she halted mid sprint with a corrective, “Nope, wait, no,” before taking a sharp ninety-degree turn to her right.

Theron nearly choked on his mint with the speed at which she took off, coughing it up back out of his tonsils and tucking it into his cheek for safety. He’d almost freed his blasters to fend off the army awakening around them when the Jedi slammed into another locked door, declaring, “Here!” as she opened it with a quick swipe of her pass.

The Jedi fell through the doorway as it opened into the ceiling with a rush, shutting her lightsaber off, taking Theron with her to smack his head face-first into the floor. He heard the powering up of countless automated blasters before the durasteel portcullis crashed back down, nearly severing the legs he barely pulled back in time. As the Jedi rolled herself back up to her feet, the huge door barely rattled under the assault of some several dozen battle droids all firing upon it, soft as rain on a rooftop in spring.

Theron exhaled into the cool tile beneath his cheek, grateful the Jedi had evidently brought them back into a room with central cooling. He let his eyes drift shut to appreciate the soothing marble for a moment before a voice disturbed him.

“If you’ve come to argue about your spy again,” said the new voice from across the white room, distinctly Imperial and annoyed in its affectations, “I suggest you wait until after I lift the lockdown.”

Theron bit back a groan and rolled onto his back, taking in the surroundings of his sanctuary.

Structurally, the room was nothing special; two doors at opposite ends with roughly forty feet between them, octagonal in shape with a single enormous console in the middle. A few odd mouse droids scurried about, the only furniture for them to weave around being a long red sofa and a single coffee table. Nothing about it was particularly noteworthy except for the outright alarming number of monitors of all shapes, dimensions, and resolutions which crowded every square inch of every single wall.

His mouth hung agape as his head darted about trying to count them all. Displayed on each screen was a different image, some flickering with radio static of monitored signals, others bouncing between inexplicably linked dossies and blue prints, countless more spying in on sliced security feeds and diagrams Theron couldn’t even begin to make heads or tails of. Connecting many of the monitors were ropes of red holograms, overlapping and crisscrossing to form a tangled web that completely blocked several monitors from sight, each of those strung with dozens of notes tabbed on in a hasty, illegible script. 

Oh, thought Theron, almost relieved as he settled upon an explanation while he stood. This was a crazy person’s room.

“Please, you have got to scale back on the droids,” the Jedi ahead of him bemoaned. She shuffled toward the sofa with a huff, brushing her robes out in front of her. 

There on the couch sat the madman Theron could only assume was responsible for the entire ordeal he’d undergone that evening, hunched over his coffee table, lost in his work. 

A cathar, long and lean with wild black hair, his wrinkled white suit was rolled at the sleeves to reveal fur blacker than the void between stars and the reflective glint of a cybernetic prosthesis. In his palm of flesh he held a crystal tumbler, nearly empty save for the last few drops of an unknown brown liquor, while fast metallic fingers danced over several more screens he’d laid out across the table.

“You lived,” the cathar continued, tipping his drink to his mouth. “Probably just an attempted burglary but I’ve already sent for Tallia, just in case.”

“Actually,” Aerasuni said smugly, rocking on her toes with hands clasped behind her. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“I rather disagree on-” The Cipher lifted his head, revealing a pair of brilliant green eyes as his pupils narrowed into slits, horror stricken in his sudden understanding upon noticing the other spy.

“Uh…” Theron, who would really have preferred to have lived out the rest of his days without someone this obviously thorough being aware of his existence, lifted his hand to give an awkward wave. “Howdy.”

Something hollow settled behind the Cipher’s eyes, chest heaving with shallow, uneven breaths. Theron felt his stomach twist in response. Apparently that had been the wrong greeting. 

The Cipher’s face, gaunt from exhaustion, turned slowly toward the Jedi, the briefest flash of soul crushing hurt twisting his features in agony before settling into rage as his lips curled into a snarl.

“You!” His fist grew tighter around the glass at his side, snapping to his full, impressive height, sending his datapads clatting to the floor as he raised a metallic finger to point at the Jedi for emphasis. “I told you no!”

“Yes, you did,” Aerasuni argued, “but you were being completely unreasonable and you know it.”

Theron craned his head to focus in on a long metallic object laid across the sofa reflecting the harsh white light of the thousand and one monitors. His throat seized upon recognizing that yes, that was indeed a high impact repeating sniper rifle that could have turned his skull to mush at easily a hundred times the distance between himself and the Cipher.

He slowly shifted his hands at his side to hover just above his holsters.

“Unreasonable?” the cipher repeated, offended. “I’m not the one who broke every last security protocol we have and left us vulnerable to an attack!”

“No one is going to attack you,” Aerasuni corrected wearily, her voice rapidly approaching shouting against the Cipher’s obstinance.

“No,” the Cipher agreed, sharp eyes locking onto his rival spy once more. “They’re not.”

Oh shit.

The Cipher leapt for his rifle, glass tumbling out of his grip as he rolled the sofa over for cover while Theron ducked for the safety of the central console, blasters firing as each spy dove. Theron felt the heat of a single, high power bolt burn past his ear, catching a glimpse at the new scorch marks etched into the bottom of the upturned couch just inches away from the Cipher’s scrunched up nose.

Over the hiss of the reload his Jedi could be heard bellowing, “Both of you, stop that!”

His grip strained and strained as some invisible hand tried to wrench the blasters from his fingers, tearing so strong it dragged him out from cover as his boots tried to dig in against the pull. Out from safety, he noted the Cipher having the same difficulty, being hoisted into the air by the strap that held his rifle to his shoulder. Between them stood Aerasuni, face set firmly into a disappointed frown, hands raised and pointed at either of them.

Ah. Theron knew a fed up Jedi when he saw one and surrendered, letting his blasters fly across the room to clatter onto the pristine floor, his head once more smacking into the tiles as the force of his counter-pull left him with nowhere else to go.

The Cipher wasn’t so quick to give in, however. “Three-Kay, scramblers, now!”

One of the mouse droids that had been scurrying about the room darted back around toward Theron, skiing on two wheels in a sharp turn before landing and ramming right into his thigh, bouncing off with an adorable pair of scoots. He made the mistake of giggling at the feeble attempt before a latch opened on the droid’s back and an arm unfurled, stabbing him with a painful shock that wracked its way up his spine.

“Agh, fuck!” Theron screamed, hands clawing against where his implants steamed and singed from where they’d burned out, legs kicking in pain. “What the fuck is your problem?”

The Cipher’s bitter cackle was interrupted by a growl from the Jedi who threw the offending mouse droid into a wall. “Pargal!” She flattened her palm, paralyzing the Cipher in a stasis grip.

The Cipher only responded by spitting, eyes feral with contempt as his muscles twitched and strained in struggle against being scruffed. Theron half expected him to hiss next.

Outside the door, the sounds of gentle rain halted as some heavy disturbance shook the walls. Theron might have mistook it for the throbbing in his skull if the Jedi hadn’t turned her head to the noise as well and given an exasperated sigh.

The noise prompted Aerasuni to drop the Cipher onto the sofa without ceremony, earning an undignified “Oof!” that escaped him as rolled ass-over-teakettle onto the smoldering red leather. With the spies thoroughly disarmed, she stepped over the coffee table to crumple their blasters into balls of scrap, leaving Theron to sit and listen as the thumping grew louder and more discordant. He sat up with a groan, watching the door, noting a red-hot glow that began expanding from the center outward.

He turned to the Cipher, hoping the mutual threat approaching would be enough for the man to see reason and work with him for five seconds. “How hot a fire can that door survive?”

The other spy wobbled to his feet, hand rubbing at his aching hip, all hope of retaliation drained from his weary features. “That’s not a fire,” he corrected.

The expanding glow halted. There was a single, tranquil moment where Theron thought whatever storm awaited beyond might have passed. Then,

BANG!

Something _huge_ crashed against the door, denting it where hot embers of molten steel shook loose.

BANG!

Theron scrambled back on hands and feet as the door nearly folded in on itself from the force of the second assault.

BOOM! The door exploded out from its frame, taking several surrounding feet of wall with it as it heaved into the room, just barely missing Theron and the Cipher before crashing against the opposing wall hard enough to make its own impressive dent, shattering every screen.

Where the portcullis once stood, there was only a wall of smoke now and the vague silhouette of a person illuminated by the silvery violet glow of twin lightsabers. The figure stepped into the room, blades sparking against the floor as pieces of wall continued to crumble around them.

“What,” the voice demanded, icy and familiar, “the fuck is your problem, Cipher?” 

In strode the figure of the Wrath, almost unrecognizable without the trappings of her dark regalia weighing her down. Where spikes and bestial fur had hung off her like trophies now laid a sharp looking coat zipped up to her chest with a neatly tucked scarf, armored sabatons and clawed gauntlets traded in for leather boots and velvet gloves. Everything she wore was still black, of course, singed and frayed at the edges after her battle, but designed far more with comfort in mind than intimidation.

“Would it really have killed you to shut off the damn droids after calling me down here?” The smoke began to dissipate behind her, the limited light of the open doorway revealing the heaps of what had once been battle droids to hint at the graveyard beyond.

The Cipher stretched forward with a pained groan, fixing his couch. “It might, actually,” he maintained, “but it clearly didn’t kill you, so stop complaining.”

The Wrath opened her mouth to argue further but startled as she noticed Theron, still sprawled out on the floor with smoke rising from his implants. She looked to the Cipher, the Jedi, Theron again, and then rolled her eyes as she pieced together what had happened.

“For fuck’s sake,” she sighed, flicking her wrist to deactivate her blades and latch them back onto her belt. “Are you really this paranoid? Jaesa’s already read him, you idiot, he’s fine.”

The legs of the sofa scraped and shrieked against the tiles as the Cipher moved it back into place, glaring wordlessly at the Sith as the irritating sound vibrated through Theron’s grit teeth.

“Tallia.” Aerasuni brought a hand up to sooth her temples, shaking her head disapprovingly as she tossed the heaps of what had once been Theron’s and the Cipher’s blasters over her shoulder. “Can you please not aggravate him further?”

Theron, refusing to be forgotten, pushed up off the floor and brushed the debris from his jacket. “Careful,” he spat, turning to scowl at the cathar, “you missed your target with the door. Wouldn’t want him to shoot you, or sick one of his little droid cronies on you!”

“You’re lucky that’s all I had prepared,” bit the Cipher.

“All of you shut up,” barked the Wrath before turning to point a thin finger at Theron. “You’re not the only one he’s ever shot so stop sulking. You,” she snapped her attention to the Cipher, “should have figured something like this would’ve happened when you refused to listen to her so stop shooting everyone and listen. And you,” her voice dropped with grave severity as she turned on the Jedi. “You have betrayed his confidence and mine, and put him at risk bringing him here, so stop playing the innocent Padawan and own up to it.”

Aerasuni’s head dropped with shame as she wilted beneath the Wrath’s scolding, hands folding back in front of her with her in a small posture. The Cipher scratched at the nape of his neck, turning to inspect the damage that had been done to his sanctum in response to his protocols designed to prevent exactly this kind of destruction. Theron’s molars gnashed on the mint stuck in his mouth to bite back the rest of his complaints, not really up for the hour long debate that would have ensued from questioning the Wrath’s frame of reference that equated his life-threatening terror to sulking _._

The Wrath stood still, nostrils flaring as another piece of wall crumbled to the floor behind her. No one argued with her.

“I’m not having this conversation in front of him,” the Cipher decided, eyeing daggers at Theron. “Both of you,” he pointed between the Sith and the Jedi, then back to the door still in tact on the far side of the room. “My quarters. Now.”

Aerasuni’s eyes began to well as the mood in the room shifted. “I’d just like to say,” she tried to speak with her trembling voice, but was stopped by the Cipher who raised a cybernetic hand to silence her.

He held a moment, searching for the words as he shifted that baneful gaze from Theron to the Jedi. “No,” he repeated, voice cracking. “Not here.”

The Jedi chewed on her lip and nodded, blinking away what was in her eyes and shuffled her dragging feet over the debris toward the Cipher’s private chamber.

The Cipher took two wide steps on his long legs toward the central console, leaning over to press one of the absurd number of buttons that were splayed across the interface. Then he looked over his shoulder, noticed Theron watching him, and shuffled his body to block his rival spy’s view with a grumble before finishing the long string of commands.

Theron tried to crane his head to peek at what the Cipher was doing but found himself distracted when the door on the far side hissed open to reveal another well guarded room. He could only spot a narrow entryway from his current position but it looked as though it opened into something of comparable size to the lair they were standing in. Aerasuni walked through first, followed soon after by the Wrath with her boots crunching loudly as she clumped over the mess she’d made. The Cipher continued to play at the controls for a moment, the remaining screens on his walls all going dark as everything in the room save for the lights shut down. 

He backed away from the dimming station, eyes locked on Theron the entire time he walked backwards to the doorway, some strange blue shield descending from the ceiling to surround the console once he was a safe enough distance away. “Touch nothing,” he commanded.

From the entryway the Wrath could be spotted rubbing a hand at her brow while the other curled into a fist on her hip. Her lips moved to reveal clenched teeth as she muttered something Theron couldn’t make out but Aerasuni responded to by slumping her shoulders.

Theron, for his part, threw his hands up at the retreating spy. “I don’t even know what any of it does!”

The Cipher didn’t answer him this time, hitting a keypad on the other side of the door as he stepped through, shutting Theron out.

Alone, ten stories into the bowels of a Casino he had no explainable business in and couldn’t navigate his way back out of undetected, surrounded by an army of battle droids he couldn’t confirm to all be destroyed between himself and his only known exit he probably couldn’t find in the dark anyway, with his only ally in a hundred miles on the other side of a mundanely impregnable fortress engaged in secret conspirations with an enemy spy and the Sith Emperor’s _fucking_ Wrath, Theron began to question his judgement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's commented so far and left kudos! We're still on track for the initial promise of weekly updates with trying to keep them between 5 and 10k words each, so let's hope that trend holds.


	3. Chapter 3

A minute passed.

Theron scuffed his boots in inspection over the door the Wrath had ripped clean off. A crude “X” had been carved into its weakest point where a pair of blades were battered against it in a series of strikes. At the center of the “X” was a circle leaking molten durasteel where the plasma torch of a lightsaber had been thrust into its weakest point and twisted. Expanding from there was a curve where the Force had been harnessed like a battering ram to pummel the door into submission once, twice, three separate times before caving and launching across the room. He gave a grudging nod of respect for her handiwork, messy and terrifying though it was up close.

Eight minutes more came and went.

The black screened monitor still held a slight charge to it as he ran his fingers over the glass, the low static tingle almost pleasant compared to the zap he’d earned testing the blue energy shield which hovered around the console. 

If he pressed his cheek against the screen he could almost see the outline of the graph on recent hyperlane anomalies the Cipher had been studying. He took a deep, determined breath in, filling his lungs to the point of pain as his ribs refused to stretch any further before releasing. His finger squeaked across the fogged glass, tracing the pattern of an extremely rude gesture he’d learned from a haughty gran earlier that day.

Twenty-seven minutes of Theron’s life circled down the drain waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Feet propped on the coffee table, a glass of the Cipher’s cheap whisky in hand, he turned his head towards the door as their bickering devolved into an all-out screaming match. Nothing which came through was intelligible enough for him to discern into actual words, however, so he frowned and slumped further into the couch in resignation.

“Not like I even asked to join their dumb club anyway,” he muttered into the glass with a sip.

The lights overhead shook and the entire structure rumbled, sloshing Theron’s drink up into his face and jacket as a feminine voice roared, “ENOUGH!”

Full scale war was on the horizon beyond that door if the Sith was throwing out force screams now, and Theron didn’t know whether he should be flattered or concerned that it was all over little old him. He cleaned himself off and glanced at the whisky bottle trying to catch his breath, really wishing he hadn’t spit his mint in there and spoiled the only available balm for his nerves just for a petty prank. Normally he’d have retaken control by using his implants to slice into the controls but-

Huh...

The empty tumbler twirled in his wrist as he studied it, contemplating. It was old school. Really, really, _really_ old school, but…

He shook out the rest of the glass and crept over to the door, kneeling down and pressing the hollow end against the cold surface, laying his ear against the flat, heavy bottom of the crystal. The Cipher may have skimped out on his whisky but he shelled out the big credits for his drinkware. Beneath the rush of air that brought back memories of the time he’d nearly drowned mistaking a rip tide for a tranquil paddling spot, Theron listened to the crystal amplified rumblings of the fierce debate raging on the other side of the door.

“-established that, yes,” said the Wrath, her voice distorted and distant but plainly vexed. “Forgive her or don’t, trust any one of us or don’t, but you cannot…” She trailed off, lost to something unknowable through the wall between them.

He waited for her to continue. She couldn’t sense him, could she? There hadn’t been anything in her dossier about a similar intuition to her cousin’s. Although perhaps there wouldn’t be, if she kept that ability to herself. She was observant though... it might have been Aerasuni who’d sensed him and given some sort of tell the Wrath picked up on.

Aerasuni, either acting or sincere, was just as confused by the Wrath’s derailed train of thought as he was, however, and called a soft “Tallia?” with her brittle, small voice. 

He suppressed the painful clench of his chest at the realization that she’d been crying. Crap. Sympathy was probably like a giant, flaring beacon to her. She’d definitely pick up on his attention now if she hadn’t already sensed him before. He needed to be centered if he was going to continue this undetected.

He breathed in, slowly. 

His implants may have burned out thanks to the Cipher but they only made easier that which he’d already mastered. He didn’t need the force, he didn’t need his tech. He just needed to breathe. 

He closed his eyes and exhaled. 

Calmly, he listened.

“It doesn’t matter, is all I’m saying,” the Sith continued, shaking off whatever had overcome her. “He’s here now, he knows now, it’s done. Focus on finding a place for him.”

“Oh, I have several in mind,” said the Cipher, his deeper voice coming through much clearer than the others’. “There’s a furnace right here in the casino.”

Welp. That was his cue to leave, then.

“You will not harm him,” the Jedi spoke up, her voice steadying with a fierceness that almost made Theron understand how she called the Wrath cousin. “Now, I’m very sorry for whatever the SIS did to you. I don’t know because you won’t tell us-”

“A decision you’ve only validated with your actions today.”

“I will rip your tongue out through your throat if you start in on that again.”

Okay. So. Maybe Aerasuni still had a ways to go before she caught up to her cousin after all.

He suppressed his shudder at the mental image that produced in the beat of silence which followed before the Cipher relented. “... fine.”

“I’m sorry,” Aerasuni continued, softer now as she remembered herself. “I’m sorry for the pain you’re in but Theron isn’t to blame. You can cast me out if you like but you’ll leave him be.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” said, of all people, the Sith. “No one’s casting you out and no will damage your spy.”

“Drugs, then.” If it weren’t so disconcerting it might have been genuinely impressive how every idea this man brought forward made it that much harder for Theron to keep his breathing steady. “The SLV-serum can alter memory, we just won’t reprogram him for any-”

“No one,” Wrath stressed. “Will damage. The spy.”

He offered no further suggestions.

“Even if you don’t trust me anymore, can’t you at least trust a Jedi’s judgement? I know Theron. Jaesa’s read him. Both of us have told you he’s a dedicated professional who wouldn’t turn us in.”

The Cipher actually began laughing at that, a bitter, half-crazed cackle. “You realize that’s impossible, yes? Either he’s disciplined and he’ll report us in his duty, or he’s a rogue and he can’t be trusted.”

That explained why they’d been squabbling for so damn long at least. The Cipher displayed an uncanny knack for twisting any logic thrown at him to bend in his favor.

There was a faint _smack_ , which he knew very well to be the familiar sound of a Jedi at their wits end trying to keep their brain from melting out their eyes with brute force. “That is completely unfair and insane and you know it. I think if you stop trying to shoot him, or zap him, or drug him for five minutes and just approach him like a person, he might surprise you.”

“Yes, I’m sure he’s very nice, that’s how spies are trained to lower your defenses. And after being shot at, he’s probably just waiting for the opportunity.”

“It is like talking to a permacrete wall.” The Jedi’s voice was muffled as she spoke, as if something, perhaps her hands, or a pillow, were attempting to smother her frustrations.

The Wrath, who was very good at breaking walls, let out an aggravated groan. “Pargal, you thought I’d skin you for a hat when we met. Today you called me in a panic needing to be rescued from a mistaken burglary. We all adapt.”

“No, you adapt, I anticipate!” Panic played at his tight vocal cords.

Briefly, very briefly, Theron had an approximate idea of how the rest of their row would follow; Aerasuni would bring up an exhausted counterpoint grounded in reality, the Wrath might say something biting to back her up and drive that point home, and the Cipher would of course argue an impossible scenario of another counter-counter point, on and on and on, until they argued themselves into the grave and left Theron to turn to dust against the door, making the entire drawn-out ordeal moot. 

Hence why it came as such a shock when he heard the Cipher’s sharp tongue dig the hole his entire argument would be buried in.

“And I only _adapted_ to relying on you when I realized how easily I could outmaneuver you through _anticipating_ your actions because I’m smarter than you. Which is exactly why you begged for my help in the first place.”

He winced and turned his ear away from the crystal, not wanting to know whatever wretched screams would accompany the Wrath’s retaliation. Nothing came of it though. 

The passage of time grew fuzzy in the anticipation which followed, somehow worse than the blood-curdling screams he’d expected. Unmitigated rage was at least a predictable reaction from a woman who called herself Wrath. That was perhaps her point, he reasoned, uncomfortable as the frozen emptiness left hanging in her fury’s absence was. It wasn’t often he lamented being unable to commune with the force, but insight such as Aerasuni’s would have been a great boon in solving the riddle of the Wrath with all her unsettling bouts of silence at the tensest moments.

The Jedi was the first to break the pause as he heard footsteps approach the door. “Tallia, don’t leave,” she implored. “He phrased it very, very badly but beneath it he only meant to say that he trusts you.”

Theron lifted onto the tips of his toes, preparing to bolt back to the safety of his shot up couch and sullied whisky. All that served to do, however, was leave him off balance when the door opened and a pair of hands reached up to seize him by the collar and drag him through.

“Hey!” Theron protested, trying to squirm free.

Despite the impression she gave off, the Wrath was not, in fact, larger and crueler than life itself. She was actually quite average in height, meaning that as he flailed, he lost what remained of his solid footing and was left to dangle passively as the Sith towed him, his legs flopping along uselessly afterward. 

In the humiliating second he had before being hurled into an armchair, he took in the private chamber he’d been previously locked out of. 

Wrath had thrown him into what looked to be the living area of the open-style suite, though it hardly looked lived in at all; unlit fireplace to the right, sterile kitchenette to the left, dark leather stretched tightly over polished silver frames on all the furniture which had been arranged meticulously onto crisp white carpeting. Facing out ahead of him was where the Cipher might have theoretically slept if he were ever to submit to such a vulnerability, neatly made double bed within arm’s reach of both the fresher and an overstuffed armory that probably held all the best tools of the spy trade. There were a few plastic looking plants thrown in for flavor and the odd surrealist painting, but no windows set along the slate painted walls of this self-made prison.

If he hadn’t crawled through a veritable dungeon to get there, he might have mistaken it for one of the nicer suites the resort offered.

Aerasuni splayed her fingers over her face to peek and sigh through from where she sat wide legged on the ottoman by the fireplace as she watched him land with a spin. “Are you alright, Theron?”

“Wonderful,” said the Cipher, holding up a hand to begin counting on silver digits. “Now he’s seen our headquarters, our vaults, our ops center, and where I sleep. Why don’t you just hand him one of your lightsabers and I’ll stick my neck out so we can get this over with?”

Theron rearranged himself more comfortably in the uncomfortable armchair, adjusting his jacket at the shoulders, swiveling back around to scowl at the Wrath who doubled back to retrieve something from the entryway. “You’ve got a manhandling problem in your family, you know that?”

She ignored him, turning so smoothly on her heel it looked almost mechanical as she brandished the crystal he’d been using with a familiar glint in her eye. “Rather better than a taste for the drink, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Is that my Alderaanian crystal?” The other spy unfolded his arms and leaned up from the bar counter to glance between the glass and Theron. “Was it not assumed that my spirits were included in telling you not to touch anything, or should I have taken the time to list out item by item what you’re unwelcome to?”

The Wrath tossed the tumbler over to the Cipher as she stretched lazily across the sofa directly opposite Theron, elbows propped on the armrest to hold her head up as she watched him catch it with ease. “You and that superior intellect of yours didn’t anticipate he might be thirsty?” 

For all the galaxy she looked like the nexu who’d caught the orokeet, but the way she aimed that smug self-satisfaction at the Cipher, Theron didn’t feel like he was the orokeet despite being the one she’d caught. Confusing him further, she looked back to him as she kicked her boots out onto the couch, giving a conspiratorial nod with the same intensity she’d had in the office on Manaan.

Did that mean she was expecting something of him then? He petitioned her for a hint of any kind, splaying his hands open in an inquisitive gesture. She answered by jutting her chin to point over to the Cipher who was setting the glass aside, having failed to grasp the significance of it.

Oh.

She nodded.

“Sorry, Pargal,” he began, fighting his own knowing grin as he forced the man’s real name into the open. “Figured I’d better just help myself without asking, wouldn’t want any SLV-serum thrown into my cocktail.”

The cathar’s face stretched from it’s tightly clenched sulking into wide eyed shock complete with unhinged, babbling jaw as the Wrath’s eyes lit up from the thin lipped grin that dared to betray her menace. “How long were you listening?” he demanded.

Theron gave him an evasive shrug. “Long enough.”

He picked up the glass to wield it at the Sith with a shaking fist, shouting, “How long did you know he was listening?”

She killed the grin on her lips to give an unimpressed, one-shouldered shrug. “Long enough.”

The spy threw up his hands with a snarl and spun around the counter into the kitchen, hands swinging wildly as he raved. “At no point did it occur to you that this was exactly the kind of thing I’ve been trying to warn you about?”

The Wrath remained unconcerned. “Yes, it occurred to me that you’re so busy cowering in fear of what he could do _to_ you that you haven’t stopped to consider what he could do _for_ us.”

From the kitchen the Cipher responded with a loud, passive-aggressive _crack!_ from whipping a cloth from his dish rack.

Aerasuni flinched but persevered as she added,“I think she has a point, Pargal. You left him alone with damaged implants and locked him out of your system, and he still found a way to spy on us.”

The cathar gave her an evil eye over the bar counter as he washed the glass, unmoved by their argument but at least considering them enough not to resume shouting.

Theron had never witnessed the reportedly universal experience of watching one’s parents argue or having to watch one of them aggressively clean to make their displeasure with one known. Sitting in his chair glancing between the Cipher and the Jedi, however, he was perhaps beginning to understand the concept, and felt himself sinking further into his chair.

The Wrath, however, seemed to have far more experience in that department, and cracked each knuckle on her fingers with disinterest as the Cipher proceeded to crack the cloth once more to shake it out. 

“Unbelievable.” He grit his sharp teeth, waving the cloth in his hand between the Sith and the Jedi. “The one time you agree with each other and it’s over this?”

“Yes,” the Sith answered dully, glancing up over her knuckles. “Because even this brutish oaf is clever enough to see you’re falling apart trying to run this all by yourself.”

_WHAM._

The Cipher slammed the glass on the counter. “Well, why don’t I just let you run things again? You were doing so well, as I recall. Tell me, what was your initial goal? Was it getting as many students as possible killed? It must have been you were so-”

“Pargal!” The Jedi slapped her hands emphatically onto the seat, straightening her posture. The Wrath gave a roll of her eyes at their shows of force as Theron’s scrunched up neck was all that remained of him on the actual seat.

“That is not helping,” she continued. “I know what I did hurt you but that is not an excuse to take it out on her.”

The Sith finally gave her first uncomfortable flinch at the Jedi’s intervention. “I don’t need you to defend me,” she snapped. “Besides, he’s right. We all have shortcomings, and yours,” she pointed to the cathar, “is that you over-anticipate to the point where you cannot adapt anymore. One day, someone like him is going to catch you off-guard and once again our students will be the ones who pay the price. I’d rather take our chances having him with us than against.”

Midnight strips of black patterned around the spy’s green eyes narrowed to points as his brow furrowed, laying his palms flat on the counter to stare out pensively. He stared at nothing, distant with thought, considering, calculating. Whatever was happening in that mind of his, it was far more in-depth than an easy jab at the Sith or a fearful fallacy to sling at the Jedi for him to be this quiet for this long. He was teetering on the edge of finally accepting what they’d been trying to tell him for the last half hour. Aerasuni saw this and stood, wide eyed, eager to push him over the edge.

“You know, Pargal,” she began, putting on her best diplomat voice as she steepled her fingers in front of her and began to pace. “Tallia and I do have each other to balance out our influence. You’ve always been our neutral arbiter but perhaps it couldn’t hurt to have your own counterpart. Someone with similar training, just to anticipate other perspectives and broaden your arsenal of solutions.”

Pargal groaned and slumped, his head dropping in dismay as he bowed to their persuasion. “You are both of you the most transparent pair of manipulators I’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing.”

Halfway sunk into the ground, Theron figured he may as well involve himself. “But they’re right,” he added, hoping he was low enough that the spy couldn’t actually get a good shot on him if he had a rifle behind that counter.

“Yes, I know, why do you think I’m despairing? I’m certain I’ll live to regret this.”

The Wrath shrugged. “You’ll live, though.”

The other spy glanced at Theron, only his eyes visible above the counter-top from his current position. They narrowed in, considering his options, perhaps even attempting to stare-down this would-be rival before his heavy, black lids collapsed in defeat. “Yes,” he sighed, “I suppose I have so far.”

Aerasuni turned a knowing, pitying glance to her cousin. The Wrath looked back at her with resentment.

Pargal raised his hand to rub at those tired, tired eyes, and a wave of understanding nearly knocked Theron out of his seat as he counted only two remaining claws on this man’s only remaining hand. Thick black nails from his thumb and index fingers pressed into the bridge of his nose while bare, ragged fingertips were left to hang aimlessly in front of his cheeks.

Torture.

Ripping fingernails out wasn’t an unheard of tactic against humans or other near-humans with similar physiology. With cathar, however, their meager ‘claws’ if they could even be called that were an obsession for most aliens, xenophobe and xenophiliac alike. It had been why the Mandalorians led the assault which made Theron’s ancestor famous for defying, believing that just because a people had a few natural defenses their brains and technology had rendered useless millennia ago, it meant they’d make for a good test against a maniac in beskar with an orbital strike behind them. Those who’d escaped the genocide found a galaxy still obsessed with likening them to animals, humiliating and emasculating them when they were unfortunate enough to be sold to the chattel markets or captured by the Empire. 

He’d rescued a group of cathar POWs not far from this casino, once. They’d sent him their thanks after, sharing anxieties of the mutilations they’d have uniquely endured as those yet un-humbled descendants. It had been unpleasant enough just to hear about the declawing practice with how deep their roots supposedly went into the bone. He couldn’t imagine what it would have felt like to endure.

How little of Pargal’s body and pride were left intact beneath that white suit that he guarded himself this viciously? How much of himself did a man have to have stolen before he hoarded his trust from the world and locked everyone out like that?

Or was this fortress just the natural conclusion awaiting anyone who played the spy game long enough?

His face relaxed from spite to pity.

Theron pouted his lips and blew out what was left of his hot air out through them, offering the first branch. “Well, I sure won’t be the one pulling the trigger if you can promise the same.”

The spy’s scarred hand dragged down his face as he straightened, resting on the messy beard beginning to take shape at his jaw after what must have been three or four days without trimming. He shot a look of disbelief at Theron, all accusation gone as resignation settled in its place. “Having seen our operation, you’d actually want to be party to this insanity?”

Theron considered the Cipher in all his bedraggled exhaustion, the Jedi with her arms wrapped tightly around her middle as the only comfort she could find, and the Sith desperately trying to press herself into the sofa as far from that Jedi’s compassion as she could manage.

Well, he figured. There were probably worse causes to tie his anchor to.

“I think we can figure out a way for this to work out without cutting into my schedule, yeah.”

Aerasuni’s head snapped up as he agreed, her entire face beaming with unrestrained glee that almost made the faint tear lines streaking down her freckled cheeks vanish. “I had a few ideas about that, actually.”

“Yes,” said the Cipher, circling back around the counter. “I’m sure you did. But I’m still in charge of operations and I want to see how he operates for myself before I decide what to do with him.”

“What, like a test?” Theron lifted himself back into his chair as he spoke, deciding it was probably undignified to continue this while sitting on the floor.

The cathar dragged one of his silver bar-stools screeching across his white tiles and plopped himself atop it as he elaborated. “Trial run, at any rate. Tallia, you’ll take him in my place on the run to Darth Goja’s estate tomorrow. If his skills are comparable-”

“Hold on,” the Wrath interrupted, appearing for the first time since he’d met her to be rattled as she sat upright. “No one’s agreed to that.”

“I did,” said the Cipher, plainly.

She planted her soles firmly on the ground to glower at him. “You don’t think that’s perhaps a dangerous idea given that it’s _tomorrow_?”

Aerasuni and Theron were both taken aback at her sudden shift in demeanor, the Jedi far more noticeably concerned while his curiosity reigned. The Cipher, however, had room for neither, and simply leaned against his counter with a long exhale.

“You wanted me to find a place for him. For now, that place is in your capable hands while I evaluate him.”

Her fingers gripped into the arm of the couch tight enough for the leather to audibly squeak and strain on the verge of tearing. “These are volatile enough operations even with weeks of preparation and perfect synchronicity!”

The spy rolled his eyes, perhaps understanding why the Sith had been so frustrated with him earlier now that their roles were reversed. “Well, what better place to test how adaptable he is then?”

“Darlon’s sanity is fraying, if he senses someone he doesn’t know on the extraction it will push him to exposing himself.”

“Darlon has been trained for this and it doesn’t matter if he exposes himself because Goja will be too distracted by you to bother worrying about him.”

“What,” Theron asked, “exactly is a Goja and what am I being volunteered for?”

“She is Sith,” hissed the Wrath with a particular kind of scorn as she crossed her arms to pout, revealing creases in the sofa where she’d nearly torn through the fabric.

“No shit.”

Aerasuni sighed and flopped down onto the other end of the sofa far from her cousin to look at him solemnly. “They’re going to kill her.”

Theron’s pulse froze. Half-answers and allusions had been the norm for so long with them he wasn’t quite sure what to do with such unabashed transparency. Perks of official membership, he guessed. Intellectually, he’d figured the Empire wouldn’t be reformed through pamphlets and protests and charitable donations. Imperial Ciphers, Jedi Masters, and Sith Lords didn’t gather to engage in discourse beyond deciding which head of which snake to cut off first. Theron himself was no stranger to taking out a Sith or two and an entire Star Destroyer along with them. Practically, however, these people didn’t seem like the kind who’d risk exposure arbitrarily for one random Sith.

So he asked, “Why?” 

“Because she deserves it,” the Wrath replied without hesitation.

That he didn’t doubt, but he’d hoped for something more useful. The Cipher for once was the first to offer up elaboration, settling into his stool with a lazy stretch across the counter, practically melting in his fatigue.

“Because,” he began, “she’s been elected to replace Darth Soverus on the Dark Council. Thank you for arranging that, by the way. Darlon, our man, was maneuvered into her apprenticeship two years ago.”

Right. The seeded acolytes. Probably a better long-term plan for reform than randomly picking off Lords; replace a lousy Sith with a decent one, get enough decent ones, maybe stand a chance of getting a majority to agree to peace. Or at least, a chance at winning in the event of a civil war. It seemed like a longer con than two years to pull off efficiently, though.

“Isn’t that kinda young to be taking her place?”

“He was made a Lord last year,” Aerasuni explained. “And the Sith are running out of veterans to replace those they’ve already lost. They’ll have to at least consider him.”

That was probably true, actually. Between Jedi assault forces, military strike teams, SIS traps, and mostly their own inept scheming and infighting, the Sith were probably down by half of what they’d started this war with just three years prior. Their military was barely holding the line, a testament to their draconian efficiency despite their leadership. They couldn’t afford the luxury of denying the young and powerful their due anymore. The Wrath’s embittered huff as she stared distantly into the fireplace was her way of agreeing. 

Maybe that was why she wanted to reform the Empire, he reasoned. Five, ten more years of this kind of all-front warfare, and she’d probably be one of the last survivors of a dead people.

“Besides,” the Cipher added, “if you do your job right, the whole thing will look like our man’s careful grab for power with just enough deniability to earn a promotion from Lord to Darth.”

And that, everyone knew, was exactly why the Sith were dying off.

“Alright,” Theron agreed. “Alright, it’s not pretty, but I’ve done jobs like this before. But I’m gonna need a full debriefing to look over and something in exchange before I commit.”

“And here it comes,” the cathar sighed. “Aerasuni, I’d assumed you told him this was a charitable cause led by a disowned zealot.”

The Wrath scrunched up her face as she spoke and turned her head away to mouth a mocking ‘zealot’ at the spy’s comment.

“I think he just means a promise there won’t be a repeat of this… incident,” Aerasuni reasoned, far more helpfully but equally off-track. 

Theron waved a dismissive hand to refocus the conversation. “Look, I don’t care about money and I’m trusting your truce for now. I just need resources Darok doesn’t have access to if I’m gonna find the Revanites without them catching wind. Whatever you’re surveilling, past, present, or planned, I need access to it.”

“No,” said the Cipher with a slow shake of his head, too tired to bother putting any real effort into it. “Too great a risk to our hidden agents. Concluded mission files maybe but anything else-”

Halfway into sifting through his mental catalog on how best to slice into the Cipher’s files anyway, Aerasuni offered a suggestion. “You could just... redact the information that might compromise our people.”

He gave her an impressed smile. Good ol’ Jedi diplomacy.

The cathar let his head fall back against the counter with a dull thud and a groan. “Have you any idea how long it’s going to take me to write up something to sort through all that?”

The Sith grumbled unsympathetically at his plight. “You won’t have to if you’d just go with me like you’re supposed to.”

“It’s that or wait for him to find a way to break into the files himself,” said the Jedi, correctly.

The Cipher growled as he began rhythmically bouncing his head off the counter before forcing himself back up out of his slouch and sliding onto his feet, his spine cracking at least six times as he stretched. “I’d better get started, then.” 

Aerasuni pushed herself up by her knees in a fluid motion to make her way into the kitchen. “I’ll make some caf, get started on cleaning up the place.”

“I think you’ve rather helped enough for one day,” said the Cipher with no real venom to his bite despite the implication. “Just take your spy upstairs and get him settled in, Tallia or a droid could just as easily sweep and fetch drinks.”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“Define settled in,” said Theron, concerned.

The cathar flinched at each clink and clang of clashing mugs as the Jedi rummaged through his cabinets, ignoring him. “Membership comes with free room and board in the casino,” he explained. “You can stay in any available room of your choosing until the mission. I’ll need that much time to prepare your files at any rate.”

Theron lifted himself out of his seat with an appreciative, “Hm,” at the thought of staying in a luxury resort suite for once. It beat the hell out of crashing in the cramped bunk on his shuttle or renting a dingy little hovel in the Duros Sector where spice addicts would be trying to break in every five minutes.

“Aha!” Aerasuni called from the kitchen, stretching on her toes to retrieve a pair of mugs, one of which he recognized from her shopping trip through the Plaza on Manaan; a cheerful looking little bulb of sky blue with a curved fishtail for a handle and a crooked looking fish face painted onto the opposite side greeting _“TIDE-ings from Manaan - You’re a Catch, Buddy!”_

His face stretched in an ear to ear grin he couldn’t quite slap his hand over in time. No frightful ghost of a man with that many cybernetics had any business owning a mug that cute and Theron immediately slowed his shuffling at the chance of catching a glimpse of the imposing cathar actually holding it. The entire ordeal, traffic, stairs, droids, Sith, and all, would have been worth it to see that.

The spy sighed upon sight of it and looked to the Sith for aid. “Tallia, please chase her upstairs so we can get to work.”

The Wrath, who had taken to picking the frayed edges of her scarf, dismissed him with a scoff without bothering to lift her eyes. “Get a droid to do it, if you can find one with legs still.”

“Before you do that, I have a question,” said Aerasuni, depositing the fish mug beneath the spout of the caf maker and turning it on. “Tallia can move heavy things very well, yes, but has she been learning to program and encrypt so she can spot you if you pass out at your station again?”

Huh. Apparently the Jedi had been listening when he’d talked her through how to break into the Dark Council chambers.

“Can’t be _that_ difficult,” the Sith muttered, blithely ignorant of how mistaken she was.

“No, wait,” the Cipher folded his arms, eyes squinting nearly shut as he began stammering. “I, hold on, I resent that, I haven’t fallen asleep at that station in... I’m not going to fall asleep, that’s what the caf is for.”

The Jedi smiled sweetly as she turned on the faucet to fill her own plain mug. “Oh, I see. Well then, Tallia, do you know how many sugars he takes in his caf?”

She shrugged, crumbling the burnt fabric between her fingers. “Seven.”

The Cipher and Theron both audibly retched at the heresy of it.

“Two,” the Jedi corrected, dumping her own instant-caf powder into the plain white mug and stirring it with a cheerful perk. With the Cipher and the Sith distracted, she gave Theron a knowing wink over the counter, wagging a finger to point at her cousin.

“Alright, you’ve made your point,” the cathar relented, recovering from the sickening taste he’d probably imagined. “Tallia, get Theron back to the lobby.”

“Uhh,” Theron droned, far from thrilled at the prospect of being entirely at the Wrath’s mercy in a dark, ominous stairwell. Not until he got a better idea of what in the hell Aerasuni was trying to arrange with this at any rate. “You know, you seem busy with taking apart that scarf there, don’t wanna inconvenience anybody. I can probably figure this out if you just give me a map and ten minutes to stretch before hoofing it back up those stairs. ”

The Sith’s fingers paused in their task as she glanced up to give him an incredulous stare. “What stairs?”

What stairs? What did she mean what stairs, did she levitate herself down the central shaft of the stairwell? Actually, that… may have been exactly what she’d done.

“The… million of ‘em you had to climb down to get here?”

Her face curled in on itself in perplexity and Theron felt his stomach lurch as she revealed, “I took the lift.” Then she turned to the Jedi, already knowing the answer as she accused, “Did you drag him all the way down the maintenance hall?”

Theron, who was going to have to spend a fortune to get the muggy sweat-stains out from the armpits of his jacket, looked upon the Jedi with dismay, begging that this couldn’t have been true.

Aerasuni’s lips were hidden behind her mug as she sipped, but the laugh-lines wrinkling around her eyes betrayed her smirk when she muttered, “Well he _watches_ the elevator cams.”

The Cipher worried at his brow with a sigh and returned toward his monitor room as the Wrath snorted a bitter chortle. “No wonder he shot you.”

Theron frowned at the Jedi who shrugged with feigned shame as the Sith’s jeering laugh echoed around them.

“Everyone out,” the Cipher instructed, hovering his free palm over the keypad to keep the door open for his guests, invited or otherwise.

Aerasuni gestured for him and the Wrath to head out ahead of her as she finished making the cafs, then gently tugged on Theron’s collar from across the room to hold him back as the Sith exited. She handed him the fish mug as an excuse when she slowly shuffled out of the kitchen to follow, leaning over to whisper.

“You can ask her about the Revanites, but don’t play head games . Be direct. She’s mean, but if you’re honest with her, she’ll be honest with you.”

He accepted the drink. Something told him _mean_ was putting it mildly. “What if I’m not honest with her?”

The Jedi’s face fell at his question. “Then don’t go on the mission and get offworld now.”

His feet dragged beneath the weight of her warning, slowing behind her until she passed him out the hallway. Aerasuni had praised of her cousin only that she trusted her. Implied in that trust was the assurance that Theron would be safe from her Wrath while they worked together but there had plainly been a reason she’d never said it outright. No matter how she lounged, no matter how she grinned, this was still a Sith. He couldn’t afford to forget that.

Approaching the doorway, he stretched his hand to offer the Cipher his prop.

“Mm,” the cathar grumbled by way of thanks, tipping his head back to take several large gulps the instant it was in his grip. From Theron’s angle, the crooked, goofy looking fish mouth took the place of his permanent thin-lipped scowl.

He tried not to grin as his hypothesis was proven; it had all been worth it. At least now he could picture that image when the Sith dragged him down a dark hallway to carve out his ribs for a trophy to add to her armor.

“Apparently I’m a concierge now, so it would behoove you to keep up, spy,” the Wrath called from the edge of the monitor room. Theron followed the sound to see her standing in the entrance she’d carved, one hand on her hip, the other holding an ornately sculpted gold lightsaber handle out like a flashlight to point into the darkness.

The door shut behind him, earning another comment from the Wrath as she spotted the cathar heading toward his station. “Get started on lifting the lockdown, Cipher, I’m not climbing those stairs.”

The cathar shooed her dismissively with his free hand, concerned far more with trying to drink as much caf as he could in a single gulp than any threat she might have given to hurry him along. Aerasuni waved farewell to him before focusing on the huge piles of debris, stretching her arms wide and slapping her palms together to squeeze them into dense cubes.

Theron gave her a half-hearted thumbs up, trying not to think about how crazed he might look as he winced from the ache in his head at the metal-on-metal screeching against the Jedi’s efforts.

The Wrath’s hand shot from her waist to her ear as she turned back to Theron, shouting, “Let’s go!”

Willing his legs to propel him forward, he reminded himself that to trust the Jedi meant trusting her judgement, and followed the Wrath to guide him through the abyss beyond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made up that mug not anticipating how much I'd wind up wanting one and now I'm consumed with longing for something I can never possess because it doesn't exist. And that's the mood for the week!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'This is a Theron/Warrior pre-relationship fic!' I say as I delay their first real one-on-one conversation by over 20,000 words.

Burnt rubber and screeching metal assaulted Theron’s senses as Aerasuni worked to clean up the ruins of the Wrath’s battle, leaving him sick of stomach and skull as he trudged after the Sith responsible. Several of the droids she’d obliterated had burst into flames upon their destruction, a few of which still flickered with dying embers as sips of oil bled out from ruined husks to keep them fed. From those small bursts of illumination amid the expansive void, he cobbled together a better sense of the chasm beyond the Cipher’s sanctum.

It was smaller than he’d anticipated in his earlier dash through, perhaps only two hundred feet across, presumably making up in height what it lacked in width if the echoes had been any indication. Only one door on either side of what had once been the Cipher’s vault were visible but noting their equidistance from their shared point, Theron estimated how many more may have been set along the walls, guessing it at an even dozen vaults grand total. What the purpose of all those well guarded, deep bunkers were, he had little evidence-based speculation, but given the Broken Chain’s need for secrecy, money, and weapons, he felt he had at least a good idea.

Smack in the center of this enormous dodecagon where the Wrath led him now stood a thick pillar towering into the darkness above, far beyond the light of her blade. At the ground level of this pillar was a single shiny door with two faintly glowing buttons with an “up” and “down” arrow stacked on top of each other beside it.

“Fucking elevator,” Theron cursed.

The Wrath ignored his consternation, stomping over a droid skull to press the “up” arrow without comment. Something large and mechanical rumbled throughout the structure in response as she clipped her blade back onto her belt. Theron stubbed his toe on the torn off arm of a droid a few steps later as his vision went hazy trying to adjust to the pitch black, cursing again with a hissed, “Shit!”

“Watch your step,” she cautioned ever so helpfully.

He gave a pained groan as he hopped on one foot beside her. “Yeah, I figured that, thanks.”

She scoffed. “Fall, then.”

Lowering his boot and biting back the pitiful whimper stuck in his throat, he turned to give her some sharp retort about how he wouldn’t have if she’d just been courteous enough to leave the damn light on for another few seconds. That comment died on his tongue as he recoiled in horror at what looked to be her disembodied head hanging in the darkness, that translucent skin of hers practically glowing atop the mass of black she wore which blended seamlessly into her surroundings. Like some sort of force apparition rising on a pillar of smoke come to haunt him for daring to follow her through the halls of this dungeon.

Spooky fucking Sith never did anything by halves, even on their off-days. 

Lana was bad enough with those calculating eyes and that impassive professionalism she put on but she had no title, no real place in the power structure to give her reason to put on airs. There was still some dimmed aspect of humanity to her, at least. The Wrath, second only to the Emperor, however, was another caliber entirely if that dossier and his own gut instinct were to be believed. Dark Councilors like Arkhous at the height of their power with a galaxy of resources at their disposal fled for their lives when she was on their trail. It was impossible to reconcile that knowledge against the image of a renegade she, her cousin, and this entire operation might have painted her for. The two identities were incompatible, and the intensity she carried herself with had him certain that the mantle of the Wrath was the real face, and dear but mean cousin Tallia, the mask.

But act or no, this Sith had seen the inside of the Revanites’ operation at one point. That was another disconcerting matter in and of itself but the Jedi had given him an opportunity to seize here.

He rocked back and forth on his heels, vacillating between light and stern approaches to bring up her old cult, trying to decide just how direct he could afford to be without having to eat a lightsaber for his questions. The difficulty of sorting his thoughts was only exacerbated by the dissonant symphony of shrieking steel the Jedi conducted through her cleaning efforts, picking up now as she pulled together more droids from across the floor.

Theron instinctively squeezed his eyes shut, unable to close his ears on command as the acoustics of the room cruelly dropped the reverberations down to the centermost point where they stood. His cochlear implant which played soothing whitenoise may have been on the fritz thanks to the Cipher but he did always make sure to bring a few ear plugs when on large city-planets full of unbearable stimuli. Digging into his back pocket, he brought forth one of the fresh packets he had on-hand and noticed the sheen of the Wrath’s teeth clenching shut to endure the cacophony.

He’d been strictly instructed not to play head-games, but he figured earning a little good will in sharing hardly counted. Plugs in hand, he tapped her shoulder to get her attention, earning him a glare as she whipped her head to snap a barely audible, “What?”

He opened his palm, revealing the gift. “Ear plugs?”

She made a disgusted looking face as she examined them and asked something he couldn’t make out over the cacophony, so he asked, “What?”

Her shoulders slumped in an exaggerated sigh before she pointed to the objects and then brought her hands back up in a questioning gesture. 

With his free hand, he pointed to the inserts and then brought one to his head, pointed to his ear, and mimed how one would go about properly pushing them in without actually sullying the item intended for her.

She flinched back with suspicion, her chin disappearing into her neck in her sickened incredulity.

Theron shook the plugs at her insistently, his comment that, “It’s fine, they’re safe,” probably going unheard.

She relaxed, slowly, bringing a hand up to gingerly take them from him. As she tucked her wisps of stone colored hair behind her ears to begin mirroring his instructions, Theron tore open another packet for himself and made quick work of getting his own pair in as quickly as possible.

Around him the world quieted, dulling until his mind was freed from the oppressive weight of sound which slowed his thoughts and vision. Able to focus again, he noticed the Sith snapping her fingers in an arc to get his attention. Probably knowing she couldn’t be heard between the noise and the plugs, she brought her fingers to her mouth and tipped her hand forward.

Well, that was… surprising. His translator may have scrambled but even Theron knew the galactic sign for, “Thank you.”

It would have been tempting to ask what the hell the second most important Sith in the galaxy was doing learning not only Shyriiwook but Galactic Sign Language in her spare time if he only knew enough GSL to ask. Instead, he reciprocated with an easy shrug, making the second of only five gestures he knew by drawing his fists into connected circles at his chest and pulling them apart to assure her, “It’s nothing.”

Almost blind in this dark as his vision struggled to adjust, and now practically deaf between the plugs and the drowned out construction, he couldn’t at all make out what the Wrath said to him with her easy shrug as she folded her arms over her chest to wait for the lockdown to lift. The loose posture of her outline, however, told him the plugs had at least had their desired effect of making her less overtly hostile to his presence. Now if he could only capitalize on it.

He did a mental tally of his usual pocket contents; no translator, medpac wouldn’t help, no flashlight on hand to blink binary code at her, pocket knife _definitely_ wouldn’t help, his maintenance kit was there but that wouldn’t matter until he could find someplace to sterilize it to reset his implants, datapad probably wouldn’t have a signal. Although… it wouldn’t _need_ one if he just typed out his messages and handed it over without trying to send them. 

The screen flashed a panicked message at him as he took it out of his pocket, desperately trying to alert him that it couldn’t find a proper signal through the jamming field he had to believe the Cipher put up around his lair. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” he told it soothingly, brushing its message aside to open the mail system and began typing. Message written, he presented the screen in front of the Wrath, waving it in front of her nose for her to take.

Her eyes scanned it in a quick flick, the backlight of the screen highlighting her reaction from surprise to annoyance as she read his words. She snatched it from him and wrote her quick reply, jabbing her arm out to return the pad.

A few lines beneath his question of, “I need to talk to you about Revanites. Aerasuni says you used to be one?”, she’d answered curtly, “Gossip is a bad look.”

Theron frowned and huffed out hotly through his nose. He typed back quickly, “I’M not hte one sidling my freinds over behind peop’els backs for clsoed meetings all the time,” not noticing the typos through his ire until after she considered his words a moment and replied with a nod to the side and wrote out, “Fair enough. Ask.”

Okay! Now they were getting somewhere, embarrassing errors aside.

“Lana says she doesn’t sense that Arkhous is in charge. Can you play double agent? Go over his head, use your connections, find out where they all are, what they’re all planning?”

The Sith’s shoulders bounced with a laugh at that, though her brows contorted in a sullen looking frown. She shook her head as she handed her reply back to him, her gestures slowed with a melancholy pouring over her.

“Arkhous dropped an ocean on my head, Master of the Order herself banished me 5 years ago... doubt my membership holds.”

Damn. It had been a long shot, he knew, but he’d still hoped. 

Unless of course that was a ruse to deter him, get him to stop asking about the cult she was still devoted to, and was just waiting for the right moment to stab him in the back. No matter what the Jedi had told him, though, he knew better than to ask _that_ so directly. Tempting as it was to hear more about this Master and the general structure of their forces, he needed to ascertain her loyalties before he proceeded.

“Is that why you formed the Broken Chain? Old club kicked you out?”

She tensed again at the question, her jaw flexing in response to rising bile.

“I outgrew them,” was all she wrote back.

Theron was halfway through writing his response, which thus far consisted of leaning his finger into the question-mark on the interface and letting it stay there, when the lights came on and the elevator door opened.

“Finally,” he said to himself as the Sith shoved ahead of him to stride in with a spin. 

His every fear came to fruition as the Sith’s eyes widened and thrust her hand out to push him back, some heavy weight rushing past his ear as she did. Theron hit the floor, landing hard on his elbows and slid back into the pile of dead droids. Not having an instant to spare, he grabbed a body cavity for a shield and tucked himself behind it to peak over and start ascertaining an exit or retaliation strategy. Aerasuni couldn’t have been far, if he could just get her to distract her-

The plan crumbled before it formed as beside him now stood a droid, crooked and damaged, but still in-tact enough to amble forward ungainly on its three broken legs. 

It lumbered toward its would-be destroyer, retracting the long cord which it had shot past Theron as he’d been thrown back. Attached to the other end of that long, winding cord was a vicious looking spear pierced deeply into the meat of the Wrath’s shoulder. She laid on her hip against the back wall of the elevator, knocked off her footing after she’d taken the time to shove his chest out from that spear’s line of fire and suffered for it.

He reached for his blasters instinctively, padding at the empty holsters in a panic until he remembered they’d been taken from him in his fight against the Cipher.

Gathering herself, the Wrath reached for her lightsabers to sever that umbilical connecting her to the droid she’d failed to finish off earlier. Too slow in either her pain or her awkward angle, the droid seized its advantage to rip that cord back toward itself before she could even ignite them, dragging her across the floor by her wound.

He couldn’t hear any anguished wailing through the plugs in his ears but watched helplessly as blue veins popped out from her neck in her open-mouthed scream. She snaked her boot behind the door jamb just in time before being tugged fully out of the elevator, wrapping her arms around the cord and tearing desperately back toward herself to try and knock the droid off its footing. 

The slack pulled taut in her favor, letting her crawl back to the protection of the elevator. The droid, however, held firm.

Scrambling to his feet now, Theron rammed the droid with his shoulder, serving only to knock it just the slightest bit off-balance as it lurched to the side. It turned its long, conical face-plate toward him, having its full attention now. Theron immediately regretted the action as the droid threw its arm out to knock him aside, pulling the firm umbilical as the Wrath slid forward another few feet with another pained stretch of her features in a soundless scream.

Though he could hear nothing, he certainly felt a single thunderous _FWOOM_ of something heavy dropping in the structure, heralding a break in the Jedi’s symphony and distracting the droid long enough for him to find his footing once more.

Panicking and with no other tools to work with, he slid into the elevator beside the Wrath and wrapped his fists tightly around the cord, hand-over-hand, pulling for all he was worth, adding whatever strength he had to hers and knocking the droid off its footing to collapse forward. Now with precious slack to work with, the Wrath rose, letting one hand fall from the cord to raise it in a grasping claw and lift the droid.

Standing this close to her and without the Jedi’s ruckus, Theron heard her command through force amplified vocals, “DOORS!”

Lacking the luxury of time to question her as the droid resumed its ruthless game of tug-of-war, Theron slammed his fist over the bold and vividly labeled “Emergency Door Shut” button just as the Wrath squeezed that clawed hand into a fist and wrenched it back to her chest. 

Through their combined gestures, the lifted droid flew toward them just as the heavy fire doors slammed down, the hydraulic power behind them severing not only the cord but the droid’s head from its body.

He removed the plugs from his ears in the aftermath, listening now to the satisfying pops and _bzzts_ of the droid’s circuitry shorting out as the Wrath heaved her own embittered laughs to mock its passing.

From the ceiling of the elevator, a small speaker sputtered to life with the Cipher’s voice. “I think I’ve found one with legs still.”

The Wrath, whose plugs had been knocked clean out of her ears when she was launched backward from the first puncture, jabbed her uninjured arm at the blinking camera to make an emphatic gesture. “Find this!”

A frantic pounding at the door announced the Jedi’s arrival to the scene. “Tallia,” she shouted, muffled through the blast proof doors. “Tallia, are you alright?”

Theron released the emergency latch, letting Aerasuni rush into the small space over the dead droid to fuss over her cousin. “I’m sorry, I’d have dealt with them myself but I had to protect Theron, I thought you’d handled them, I’m so sorry!”

He swallowed his guilt as the Jedi turned her in inspection to reveal the extent of the damage. The spear had been more like a harpoon, the inch-wide rod stabbing straight through her collar to emerge the other side where the tip had evidently been programmed to open up into four hooked claws to prevent the target from escaping. The entry wound was relatively clean despite having been jostled around enough to probably fracture if not break her clavicle, but the exit in particular looked painful. Blood and cotton oozed from her back, the jacket and her pale, scarred skin beneath having been torn to shreds.

It hadn’t been anyone’s fault, not really, just an unfortunate string of coincidences between droids lacking a presence in the force and the vault being too dark and too noisy to sense any ambush in wait. All the same, Theron couldn’t help but feeling like if anyone should be apologizing, it should be him and not the Jedi.

At least it validated his decision not to brave finding his own way out after they’d shunned him for their little aside.

The Sith shoved her cousin away with her injured arm, insisting, “I’m fine!”

Aerasuni stumbled backward, tripping over the loose cord and dragging the Wrath forward with a desperate roar before Theron caught the Jedi to halt her fall. The Sith bit her lip hard enough to draw blood to bite back the howls that fought for escape as he untangled Aerasuni from that long tail.

The Jedi placed a hand on his shoulder in thanks before punting the droid’s head out of the elevator and closing the doors, hitting a button which read “C8” and announcing, “I’m taking you to Doc.”

“Oh no you’re not,” said the Sith, throwing herself forward to childishly drag her palms down the directory, lighting every single button up for every single floor as she did so.

“Tallia!” Aerasuni grabbed her cousin by the wrists to pull her forward and berate her. “You have a harpoon sticking out of your back like a purrgil, you are going to Doc’s!”

The elevator lurched as it descended to the floor immediately below the Cipher’s, prompting the Sith to snatch her hands free and press herself far into the corner away from the Jedi. “Then I can walk there on my own, on the legs it didn’t hit, without you coddling me!”

“You are getting that looked at,” Aerasuni said, stressing each word through grit teeth to keep from shouting and interlacing her fingers in front of her to keep those grasping hands from reaching out and probably strangling the already wounded woman.

“I will,” spat the Sith as the elevator doors opened with a tactless _Ding!_ “But first, I have to get him back to the lobby since someone didn’t show him the proper way in or out when they set off the alarms and woke up all the damn droids in the first place. So,” she extended her hands in invitation out the door. “Piss off.”

The Jedi sighed, holding the door open with her boot as she tilted her chin toward the ceiling. “I’m taking the stairs back up, Pargal. Please don’t release the second wave of droids if you see a ping on the sensors.”

“I’ve already told Kimble to expect her,” the speakers replied. “If she’s not there in twenty minutes, I have his permission to grab a tranquilizer gun and hunt her down myself.”

“Leave,” the Sith growled, sliding into a secured corner from which to glower.

Aerasuni huffed, wagging her finger in Theron’s face to instruct him, “Do not let her sneak off with that thing.”

How exactly he was expected to stop the Sith from absconding into the night with her new harpoon if she really wanted, he certainly couldn’t figure, but it was probably best to show confidence in a situation like this. He nodded cautiously, evidently satisfying the Jedi who shook her head disapprovingly at her cousin before shuffling off through the data storage room.

The doors shut and the elevator stuttered once more as took off again. It descended to one more stop, opening into a huge loading dock, then began rising to complete the string of stops the Wrath had programmed.

“Stairs might actually be faster,” Theron muttered.

The Wrath ignored him, nestling more comfortably into her corner only to hiss as her back made contact with the wall and dug her harpoon that much deeper in. Theron winced, unable to convince himself any longer that this was an act given how self sacrifice wasn’t in the usual Sith playbook. This particular Sith didn’t respond well to sympathy thus far but she might stop literally backing herself into a corner if presented with reason.

“I’ve got a medpac,” he offered, reaching into his jacket to present the proof. “You could at least clean it up and get the blade out.”

“It didn’t hit anything important,” she assured him, “and it’ll only bleed if I take it out now. I’ve fought through worse.”

That he didn’t doubt. The scars he’d briefly glimpsed on her back told him those gashes on her face were probably the least of what she’d endured. In his own brief encounters with Sith, hurting them only served to piss them off which only made them fight that much harder. He wouldn’t have put it past the Cipher to intentionally let one droid slip through the Wrath’s notice just to get her good and angry for their mission tomorrow. It seemed like the kind of thing a man like that would think to anticipate without bothering to tell his allies.

Even still, it begged the question, “What’s there left to fight?”

Something daring to resemble humanity pulled her frown loose from its hard edges and let her face rest in tranquil contemplation. Her eyes darted about, the intensity melting from them as she searched for an acceptable answer but found none. She heaved a single gasp of air into her lungs, seeming to relax enough to accept the offer before her expanding chest brushed against the wound she carried and seized in pain. 

“I don’t want it,” she said, batting his hand away. She exhaled, dragging herself forward to grip the railing tightly to keep from aggravating the injury further.

Theron, who was not the infamous Doctor Kimble he’d heard stories about, didn’t need to be told no twice, and put the medpac back into his pocket for another use another day.

They rode the elevator up to the next stop, and the stop after that, and the one after that, in silence.

At the ninth stop, the Wrath grabbed her lightsaber and grit her teeth to sever what was left of the long tail to keep herself from tripping over it before they exited on the tenth stop. She straightened into taking the lead, jerking her head in a sideways nod for him to follow.

Mercifully, the elevator emerged somewhere near the back of the resort, just between the concert hall and the ballroom which weren’t currently in use and were thus relatively uninhabited. The Sith took the time to point out where the major sections of the casino were from that location, mentioning briefly that he wouldn’t be able to take that elevator again until the Cipher programmed an all-access pass for him. They passed the gym, the sauna, the V.I.P. bar, and the two on-site restaurants before finally rounding back toward the familiarity of the buffet. As she led, the occasional guest would sometimes turn a corner, spot the Sith, directly eye the object hanging from her like the galaxy's most extreme ornamentation, and smartly decide to turn back the way they came. It was almost the casual tour he’d expected to receive when starting out the night.

He wanted to tell her that he could easily find his way to the lobby from there so she could go get that damn wound taken care of, but found himself distracted by the sounds of a scuffle as they approached the security door the Jedi had led him through earlier. Crossing the buffet line, he caught sight of that same enormous twi’lek, evidently back from his impromptu lunch, grappling with some unfortunate drunk he barely had to flex any of his hulking muscles to fend off.

“Watch those mitts, meathead!” the apparent drunk shouted, and Theron’s chest seized from the familiarity of it. “I’m just looking for the little humans’ room, is that a crime?”

The twi’lek growled and spun, wrapping his arm around that unmistakable face with its crooked grin and bent nose and tousled brown waves, revealed now through the frame of a headlock.

“Jonas?”

“Theron!” The other spy rasped, gleeful in his recognition despite being strangled. “You’re not dead!”

“How did you… why would I be…? Hey,” Theron stormed over to the twi’lek, pulling on his arm. “Hey, let him go!”

The Sith followed after him, creeping cautiously as she watched the giant lift his other hand to bat Theron away like a gnat. Her brow piqued with interest as the detached malaise washed over her again, that sliver of humanity swatted away just as easily with just as much contempt. “I take it this creature belongs to you?”

The twi’lek gasped upon recognizing her voice. “Miss, uh, Lord. Ma’am.” He straightened his posture, Jonas still in arm, sucking his gut into his chest to stand in some abstraction of deferential attention. “I caught this guy trying to sneak into the staff area.”

The Sith craned her head inquisitively at Theron, who looked desperately at the choking Jonas, who himself studied the Sith with an ill-defined intrigue as he wheezed, “Is that a harpoon?”

Theron looked to the Wrath, swallowing the lump in his throat. She had that haunting look where she expected something of him again. Jonas had recognized him and those datasticks hanging out of his pocket in such a context were tools of exactly one obvious trade.

He’d been expressly warned of what would come from lying to the Wrath. Confessing, however, would only confirm the Cipher had been right in warning that allowing Theron in would only bring more SIS to their door. The rival spy had been willing to throw Theron in a furnace. It stood to reason a similar fate would be in mind for Jonas who would doubtless press for some explanation to what he’d stumbled upon.

There were no good options, save to walk the tight-rope and pray for mercy. “He’s my… friend.”

The Wrath circled Theron, Jonas, and the twi’lek in examination, weighing the evidence before her. He wanted to defend himself, explain that given what her reputation was he felt his caution had been justified, remind her of that adaptability of his she’d praised him for and cite this as just another instance of it, assure that Jonas wouldn’t talk if they could just explain things civilly.

Her jaw twitched as she scowled that hateful face at him, decision made.

If he could get his pocket knife, jab it into the twi’lek deep enough to distract him and release Jonas, he might be able to grab him and get offworld in her weakened-

“Tuvo, let the idiot go.”

Tuvo dropped him without hesitation.

Jonas rubbed at his throat, letting Theron step between himself and the Sith as he gasped, “Thanks.”

Theron, utterly baffled, looked to her for some explanation. It seemed as though he might get one as she opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by Tuvo who was not yet so terrified of her as to find her above reproach.

“Uh, Boss. Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean… I came back from my lunch break and found him-”

“Your _lunch break_?” the Sith demanded, head whipping to fix those baneful eyes on him now. “You are the evening shift, your relief isn’t for another hour, where the hell were you?”

Tuvo blinked and stammered, bringing his meaty fists up to scratch at his lekku as he struggled to find an explanation. “Well, I… Y’see. Somebody told me. Well, it, I… I mean, I think they did, but… Ma’am, I was really hungry.”

The Sith snarled, dialing her menace up by a factor of ten as she stepped between the giant and Theron, lifting him up by that same clawed hand as before and shoving him into the wall. “Are you fully aware that in your absence from this post, the lower levels were put on lockdown, releasing the droids which led to this?” She pointed to the harpoon for emphasis.

Tuvo’s yellow cheeks drained of all color as Theron placed his arm out to guide Jonas back for their retreat. Poor Tuvo, he thought. Mind tricks were only the peaceful solution if the Jedi in question could get in and out unnoticed. It only delayed the inevitable retaliation from a pissed off Sith looking for a scapegoat otherwise.

The twi’lek’s gut collapsed along with his dignity as he blubbered when piecing together the source of her fury. “Oh…. no, Lord, Boss Ma’am, I’m sorry! Please don’t kill me, please don’t fire me, I thought I was only gone a few minutes! I didn’t know how bad it got, I just got back and saw him making trouble and thought-”

“And thought you’d found some idiot drunk traipsing about and saw in him a patsy to pin your incompetence on!”

Something clicked as Theron realized the Sith was only lifting Tuvo harmlessly by his center of gravity, instead of the strangled vise she easily could have.

“I wasn’t! I didn’t! Oh stars, I’m so, so, sorry, Boss!”

He squinted, watching almost in awe as she lifted a finger to silence him, making a show of controlling her breathing as she lowered him back onto the ground. “You,” she uttered, voice as deep as she could make it in this heavily put-on act, “are extremely fortunate that your performance thus far has been exemplary. Rest assured, however, that if this ever happens again, I will personally drag you to the top balcony and let the long and bitter view on your way down stand as your severance package. Am I understood?”

This was a Sith mind trick. Fear riddled in a maze of manipulation by playing on the role she was expected to perform but with the same outcome of leaving the target so confused he’d believe anything she told him. For someone who supposedly couldn’t stand mind games, she certainly had a talent for them. She’d have made one hell of a field agent.

“Yes, my Lord. Thank you, Ma’am. It won’t happen again, Boss.”

“Good. Now be silent. You’ll mention this fool to no one, we will remember this incident as an error in the system, and if you can bother to ensure I don’t regret my mercy, you will leave this job at your leisure with glowing references and your life intact. You, however,” she turned to Theron, eyeing Jonas up and down with scorn as he gave a nervous grin. “You claim responsibility for this inebriate?”

Be direct, the Jedi had told him.

“Uh… yeah,” Theron confessed, bodily placing himself in front of Jonas who couldn’t stop that stupid grin of his from spreading for some damn reason. “Yeah, I’m the reason he’s here. Guess I just… forgot to call and tell him we had a change of plans.”

She’s mean, but...

“Alright,” she said, relaxing her shoulders. “I wouldn’t let him linger overlong, then. A lesser mind than Tuvo’s might mistake his intoxicated stumbling through the off-limits sections for some sort of corporate espionage. I’d hate to think of what those more prepared security personnel of ours might do to he or you should that happen.”

The Wrath was no idiot. No one who decided in and of her own free will to turn her might against the Sith she’d come from survived more than five minutes if she didn’t know damn well how to spot a spy and keep her guard up. She knew Jonas wasn’t _that_ drunk. She knew he wasn’t just his friend but a colleague in an agency the Cipher had warned her about. She knew just what retaliation would follow if she exposed him and had no concrete reason not to believe Theron hadn’t intentionally tried to smuggle him in to spy on her operation and expose her that made him deserve that retaliation.

The question of why hung on his lips. He chewed it back, and swallowed the doubt, realizing the answer was obvious in that she’d chosen to trust him, just as he’d chosen to trust the Jedi’s word in agreeing to work with this Sith.

He nodded to her in understanding, a bit surprised, an said, sincerely, “Thank you.”

She tensed again, ducking away as uncomfortably as she had with her cousin. “It’s nothing. Head straight out through the high-roller’s lounge past the bar to get him back to the vestibule. There’ll be signs from there to find the check-in when you’re done. I’m sure even your friend in his sorry state could find it.”

Jonas, still smirking, stepped forward to extend a hand to the Wrath. “I’m Jonas, by the way.”

“I don’t care,” she answered, looking at Theron now. “Tell them you are an old friend of Seraphina’s if you want a decent room. Or don’t. You can do as you like, you’re no prisoner.”

Without giving Theron a chance to respond, she stormed off back into the resort, hopefully heading for the on-site medic she desperately needed to seek out.

Finding his bravado back on solid ground and without the threat of the Sith in front of him, Tuvo adjusted his sharp suit and settled back into place at his post, huffing at the two spies. “Well, go on. You heard the Boss.”

Theron placed a hand on Jonas’ back to guide him out before either Tuvo or the Wrath changed their minds. Jonas waited until they were well into the lounge to straighten himself out, and shove out ahead of Theron to walk backwards and interrogate him. “So, that was a Sith.”

Crap. The Wrath’s unexpected understanding had only been the first half of his problem. Now he had to explain what the hell he was doing hanging out with a woman who could easily be identified as the second most dangerous threat to the Republic through a simple facial recognition search. The “someday” excuse wouldn’t cut it for this. Playing dumb about the eyes, and the accent, and the scars, and the _fucking harpoon_ definitely wouldn’t cut it, not after she’d lifted Tuvo with less effort than it took for the waiters to raise their drink trays. 

“Yep,” he said, unable to think of anything else.

Maybe if he was lucky, Jonas would believe him if he told him about the Broken Chain and their need for secrecy. Knowing Jonas, though, he’d probably start surveilling them on his own in his down time, just for Theron’s sake, to make sure they hadn’t pulled the wool over his eyes. The Cipher would notice him. And that just brought him right back to that furnace…

Nothing in his list of expected outcomes prepared him for the ear to ear grin which spread on Jonas’ face as she said with relief, “You know you could have just told me it was a honey pot from the start.”

Theron stopped dead in his tracks as he remembered the excuse he’d come up with hours ago. “The date! Oh! Shit. Right. Yeah, I’m uh, I’m real sorry. Um. You know how it is, though. Dangerous… game, and everything.”

Merciful fucking stars was it really going to be that easy to get away with sneaking off to help a band of rebel Imperials overthrow their government without getting Senate permission? No way it was that easy to get away with. This was technically treason. Way more people would be committing treason if it was this easy to get away with.

Jonas chortled in agreement, stopping to wrap an arm around Theron’s shoulder with a friendly shove as he kept them strolling. “I’ll say! She’s got some uh, interesting, taste in jewelry. Not even gonna ask about that. She anyone important?”

“Uh,” his head lolled in thought for a moment, deciding he could technically give an honest answer with, “no, but her boss is.”

“I getcha, I getcha.” Jonas pinched his fingers over his lips in a zipper pulling gesture to imply his understanding of the need for silence on his evident ‘assignment.’ Fucking hell, it was really that easy. 

“Just warn me next time, yeah?” he continued. “You were so freaked out over the holo you went and got me worried, so I went and checked that bin after you hung up. Saw you’d already taken off, checked the signal, all I got was dead air and a last pinged location.”

Crap. The scrambler. “Sorry. I think the whole place has a… jamming… field.”

“Probably,” Jonas shrugged. “Glad you’re not dead at least. That would have been really awkward to explain to the director.”

Theron laughed to mask his relief. “Yeah, I bet. He uh… he said I had to be deep cover for this one.”

“Hey, as far as my report for tonight goes, I had a lousy time at Local Band Amateur Night in my usual dive. Which I should probably get back to now that you’re safe and sound. Had to steal a speeder from a pissed off gran to get here as fast as I did. I’m thinking he might want it back...”

It wasn’t fair. The people he suspected, the people he lied to and kept at a distance for his safety, for theirs, kept finding ways to get him out of the trouble his own paranoia and reticence had caused. They’d inserted themselves into his life after he’d done nothing to earn their good will, and his damn conscience reminded him of it every time he suspected some ulterior motive or dark purpose when it seemed like they weren’t going to abandon him. 

All he had to give for friendship were lies and mistrust. The only anticipation he held in his arsenal was how he’d adapt when the other shoe dropped.

Because he’d passed economics, barely, Theron knew that pinched pennies and hoarded wealth never grew. They had to be invested wisely, distributed in good faith. Trust was the same, no matter what his roommate had told him. The miser who hoarded everything the world had ever given him would wind up just as poor in companionship as the careless fool who’d passed out everything he had to the wrong people and been burned for it. He couldn’t vault himself away from the world and he couldn’t spit on the hands that only sought to heal him. Not if he wanted that wealth, that trust, to grow to its full potential, no matter how it scared him. 

“You know,” he croaked, clearing his throat to cough loose the fear that clung to hold back his tongue, knowing just the thanks the man would appreciate. “I’ll bet that gran was probably an asshole anyway. You can make him wait an hour or two. We can see if this place still serves that Gamorrean Curbstomp thing?”

It was Jonas’ turn to stop in surprise. “Oh,” he said, the wind knocked out of him as a mournful sorrow replaced that permanent smirk of his. “Oh, Theron. Buddy, I don’t know how to break this to you...”

The courage he’d mustered wilted to dust.

“Oh, of course.” Casual. Amiable. It was only polite to offer letting Theron tag along all those times. Pity for the idiot who’d drown himself in work with the guarantee he’d say no anyway. Stupid Theron. _Idiot_. Never learned to read a damn social cue to save his life. “Yeah, you’re busy, I get it. No worries. Thanks for, uh… yeah. Gotta get back before they notice you’re gone, right?”

No wonder Zho, and Satele, and Malcom, and Teff’ith, and-

“Oh, fuck that,” Jonas scoffed. “No, they just discontinued the Curbstomp last year.”

“...what?”

“Yeah, it killed a guy.”

“What?!”

Jonas laughed. “They did replace it with something they’re calling Rancor Spit, though. Basically the same thing but with a little fruit juice thrown in to mask the flavor. You can buy me four to make all this up to me.”

“It killed a guy.” Theron tried not to smile given the severity of his point. 

He blew a dismissive raspberry at the warning. “Yeah, an ithorian. They’ve got twitchy PH levels, I’ll be fine!”

Investments, of course, only grew if the bastards they’d been entrusted to with their stupid crooked grins could be kept alive despite their best efforts. “I will buy you _one_.”

“Fine.” Jonas gave an exaggerated sigh and sulked off, kicking his feet dramatically in mock hurt. “Never let me have any fun.”

The grin finally split openly on his face as he followed.

Trust wasn’t a fixed currency. The exchange rates were different from person to person, some flimsy and easily torn like paper, others hard and durable like coin. Sometimes it meant a favor earned for a favor given, sometimes it meant sticking your neck out and keeping each other’s lies. Other times it was a blind and folly leap into an underground organization mired in secrecy and hellbent on testing the limits of what he was willing to tolerate. It was a puzzle for every new person he traded with.

Jonas was a simple puzzle, only wanting the friendly ear of someone who knew firsthand just how desperately someone in their line of work needed that friendly ear, but it was a puzzle he’d braved all the same. Aerasuni’s transparency through her talent for emotion did the work for both of them when it came to her dusting the welcome mat off and inviting him in. The Cipher was a riddle locked within a trap filled maze he didn’t think he’d ever solve, and any closer examination of the Wrath’s inconsistent patterns would probably only serve to reveal the camouflaged predator she was just before she struck. But he’d already braved putting himself out there to solve one puzzle. 

He could afford to ration out a little more trust to see where it grew with these strange new allies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the halfway mark! We made it! Thanks to everyone who's stuck around this far, left kudos, comments, and bookmarked. I've never written anything this long before or done any more for a longer work than jot out an outline to let it sit for years on end and this is my first time posting to Ao3 so I REALLY appreciate everything everyone's done to support me and this work. I'm not sure on the culture/etiquette of responding to comments here but I do read them all and they all make my entire day when I see them :]
> 
> I'd initially planned on the first real act taking only 2 chapters instead of 3 but realized that would mean some absurdly long chapters and figured it would be better to space them out a bit for the sake of pacing. It's looking like this will happen for the second act and the conclusion as well, so we're looking at probably another 4 chapters if I can keep the word counter from breaking.


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